About that infamous "Montenegrin Coup"

The first I had heard about this Montenegrin Coup was when Senator McCain accused Senator Paul of "working for Vladimir Putin.” Naturally the questions from Democrats and the news media was a) when did Paul become a traitor, and b) how high should we hang him?
No on asked the more obvious question: what Montenegrin Coup?

The so-called coup was thwarted on election day.

“Mr. Djukanovic and his officials initially provided no evidence to support their allegation of a foiled coup attempt on Oct. 16, the day of national elections. They said only that 20 Serbs – some of whom turned out to be elderly and in ill health – had been detained just hours before they were to launch the alleged putsch. Nonetheless, Mr. Djukanovic insisted it ‘is more than obvious’ that unnamed ‘Russian structures’ were working with pro-Moscow politicians to derail the country’s efforts to join NATO.”

Nobody paid attention when the Montenegrin opposition protested the election results. However, when the ruling party lawmakers threatened to throw opposition leaders in prison, some of the alternative media began questioning the "coup".
Al-Jazeera

The DF claim that Djukanovic has for years plundered state assets for personal enrichment and that Montenegro has endured decades of state-sponsored human rights violations including the murder of government critics. Allegations of the opposition's involvement in an armed plot to overthrow the ruling elite should thus be seen in the same light.
"Our political opponents will do anything to protect what they have stolen," Mandic says. "This election was the most fraudulent we've ever had. First there was the traditional method of buying votes, bringing in foreigners to vote, but now we have a new method of fraud - namely, carrying out a fake coup."
Indeed the key prosecution witness, Mirko Velimirovic, an alleged coup-plotter, had already given wildly conflicting accounts regarding the weapon which was supposed to be used to assassinate Prime Minister Djukanovic.

No actual weapons cache of these "coup plotters" have been produced to date.
Djukanovic was once famously indicted by the Italian anti-Mafia unit.

When we handed him some police documents showing telephone intercepts of conversations between two of the alleged coup-plotters in which inexplicably both caller and receiver were using the same telephone number at the same time, he seemed unfazed: "I'm not an expert of that. I heard it was adjusted like that."

WarisBoring

In 2014, the collaborative Organized Crime and Corruption Report Project named the Montenegrin leader the second most corrupt person of the year....
In a highly unusual and normally impossible move, police released the prime suspect in the October 2016 plot, Aleksandar Sindjelic, as a “protected witness” in exchange for his cooperation. To make the deal legally permissible, the government claimed it has changed the charges to fit the circumstances.

Antiwar

The alleged leader of the “plot” has been granted a plea deal, and is now spinning a tale of intrigue so murky that light cannot penetrate its depths. One version has it that Russian “special forces” “disguised as a Cossack folk band” arrived on the scene to “recruit” those plotting to off Djukanovic. Those are some very special forces indeed.

All in all, to say the Montenegrin Coup is suspect is an understatement. We would have to dig through many layers of corruption before we could determine if anything actually happened.
Which leaves us just one more question: why was McCain so adamant?

Former Trump campaign advisor Paul Manafort and his partner Rick Davis aided in these endeavors. Davis ultimately received $7.5 million to obtain a U.S. visa for the Deripaska and arrange meetings with Republican Senator for Arizona John McCain, all in spite of the U.S. government having banned the oligarch from entering the country due to multiple money-laundering, racketeering and extortion charges.

Yep, that sounds about right.

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

before the "coup"

That year, the pair had consulted on behalf of pro-independence forces in the tiny principality of Montenegro, which wanted to exit Serbia and become its own sovereign republic. On the surface, this sounded noble enough, so noble that McCain called Montenegro’s independence the “greatest European democracy project since the end of the Cold War.”
A report in the Nation, however, showed that the Montenegrin campaign wasn’t remotely what McCain described. The independence initiative was championed by a fantastically wealthy Russian mogul called Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska had parochial reasons for promoting independence. He had just purchased Montenegro’s aluminum industry and intended to buy broader swaths of its economy.

Hyperbole? What hyperbole?

In an interview with The Associated Press, Djukanovic said that Moscow "is waging a kind of war against Europe and the West as a whole" and is threatening "the very existence of the European Union" by supporting right-wing groups which are against the 28-nation bloc.

"Montenegro has found itself in the line of fire," Djukanovic said. "But, I'm sure Montenegro is not the main target."

"The Balkans appeared as a good terrain for the demonstration of force after Russia's campaigns in Ukraine and Syria," Djukanovic said. "With the example of Montenegro, (Russia) wanted to show that Europe and NATO cannot expand without its consent. I believe that this is the key message for the EU and NATO."

up
0 users have voted.

Montenegro. That is about all you need.
We saw where the PM lived, a palatial mansion. We were told he is paid $3500 per month, and has no other source of income, and then we drove by the aluminum company.
The tour guide was pointing out the graft and corruption without saying it.
So, the people there know it, it is obvious...what in the hell was McCain trying to do?
Bill Koch runs the industry that manufactures nasty shit to make aluminum. It is called coke,(or "something or other" coke)and is from the effluence of oil well drilling. There are plants in Orange and maybe Beaumont, TX.
What can we make of all this?

up
0 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

CB's picture

@on the cusp
coking units in order to more efficiently process heavier oil. The US produces about 20 million barrels of pet-coke per year, 75% of which is exported. Calcined coke, which is low in sulfur and metal contamination, is used to make the electrodes for aluminum, steel and titanium smelting industry.
Due to latest court ruling, the smelter will be placed into bankruptcy by the Montenegro government. Maybe some lucky Montenegrin can now pick up an aluminum smelter for a bargain price?

up
0 users have voted.

@CB Pet-coke. That's it.
It isn't marked haz-mat.
EPA caved to intellectual property arguments.
Nobody knows what's in it, but they do advise their plant employees to live no closer that 2 miles from the plants.
If I recall correctly, McCain was strongly supported by the industry.

up
0 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

snoopydawg's picture

@on the cusp
South side of Chicago close to where a lot of poor people live and their houses are full of it after the wind blows in their direction.
I'm sure that they are breathing it too and soon we will be hearing about the many illnesses from their shit.
There's no way that they could have a plant that affects white and rich people. And this is just one of many types of places that poor people have to endure.

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

CB's picture

@on the cusp
is called coke breeze. This is the residual coke left after making metallurgical coke. It is the fines after screening out particles under 1/2".

Somebody needs to give these characters a good kick in the nethers. It's the same shit with a different name.

Piles again rise along Detroit River — but not pet coke

Those black piles that have recently appeared along the Detroit River are not a reprise of the petroleum coke controversy of two years ago. This time it's something different — coke breeze — a coal-based by-product that city officials say was initially stored without permission.

And many now are wondering if it poses its own set of environmental and health concerns, especially in a community already beset with numerous forms of industrial pollution.

Questions are being raised by those in the community and elected officials because so little is known about the health effects — if any — of exposure to coke breeze. Unlike pet coke, coke breeze is a fine powder derived not from petroleum but from metallurgical coal that has been baked into a charcoal-like substance that can be burned in blast furnaces during iron processing, and also is used as an aggregate material in concrete. It is not a known carcinogen.
...

up
0 users have voted.
Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@on the cusp I know something about Montenegro's history, because I read Rex Stout. It sounds like it's mountainous, poor (sometimes to the point of famine), cantankerous and resistant to tyranny up till about the time of Stalin, after which it got kicked around by Tito and his shitfest for some years...after that, I don't know. But the liberation of such a place is not usually something that attracts the attention of high-powered US politicians, unless there's an ulterior motive.

Perhaps the motive here is the same which led the USSR to take notice of Cuba.

up
0 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

SnappleBC's picture

that not only are the Russians hiding under my bed, they are are apparently hiding under the beds of the poor citizens of Montenegro too.

My only real question in all of this are Americans, in general, wising up to these shenanigans or not? I see it as a slow burn but yeah, I think more and more people are realizing the are trapped in the matrix.

up
0 users have voted.

A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard

Population:

Montenegro 621,383

Wyoming 584,153

San Francisco 864,816

Are we sure we know why John McCain and Donald Trump want Montenegro to be part of NATO?

Maybe it's one of the known unknowns. But in any case, let's hear it for Rand Paul! At least he questions the meaning of all this.

up
0 users have voted.
Amanda Matthews's picture

crazy old coot takes his meds as prescribed.

Or maybe they don't like him either.

up
0 users have voted.

I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Or maybe make it the name of the press I want to start, if I ever start it.

For fuck's sakes. Can't someone turn down the volume on the bullshit? They've won. They're destroying the earth and fucking up our lives. Why are they still talking?

In my head, this song is the American left and right arguing. And then finding one point of agreement...

"Why is he still talking?" "Can it with the squawking!"

up
0 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

conversations between two of the alleged coup-plotters in which inexplicably both caller and receiver were using the same telephone number at the same time

I used to play this game when I was 3 or 4, and it involved two tin cans and a string.

up
0 users have voted.
Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@gjohnsit ROTFLMAO!! Jesus Christ, these people aren't even trying to tell good lies anymore.

up
0 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

snoopydawg's picture

Montenegrins now just like we were all Georgians after the Russian skirmish there and McCain said that during his presidential run.

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

up
0 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

k9disc's picture

The alleged leader of the “plot” has been granted a plea deal, and is now spinning a tale of intrigue so murky that light cannot penetrate its depths. One version has it that Russian “special forces” “disguised as a Cossack folk band” arrived on the scene to “recruit” those plotting to off Djukanovic. Those are some very special forces indeed.

I mean, shit they probably got a jet powered submarine with some god awful Armageddon Gas on it too...

up
0 users have voted.

“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

@k9disc

They said only that 20 Serbs – some of whom turned out to be elderly and in ill health – had been detained just hours before they were to launch the alleged putsch

Think Red.

up
0 users have voted.
Song of the lark's picture

Can't decide whether to kill each other or get a room in pursuit of their hegemonic dreams. Looks like the DFH ( Dirty Fucking Hippies) will eventually have to get their hands bloody. If we're not all on the oven list in the FEMA camps.

up
0 users have voted.
riverlover's picture

@Song of the lark Gloves, no guns. Maybe I am a salmon that changed its mind and is rapidly swimming back to the ocean to escape sex and death.

up
0 users have voted.

Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

riverlover's picture

He and gf are off to see roos and koalas. I want a virtual koala hug. I am a sap. But a call from OZ! A/C seems to be rare there.

up
0 users have voted.

Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.