Why Would You Tweet About Your Coup?
nymag.com
nymag.com
I mean, if I were watching one of those brainless action movies late at night and a bunch of tough mercenaries paused to post a tweet about their secret plan to overthrow a government, I would think the plot had turned so unrealistic that I would have to stop watching. There's a limit to how much one can suspend disbelief.
The thoughts on my mind now are:
Is this really real? Could it be a hoax? For humanity's sake, let's hope it's a hoax. But apparently, yes, this is real, and no, it doesn't seem to be a hoax.
So... what, exactly, were these people thinking?
There has to be more to this. I'm never, ever a conspiracy theorist (except hitching onto the Epstein didn't kill himself bandwagon). But this, it just has to be a false flag, or some other sort of set up.
Otherwise it's so stupid that it's just amazing.
... but then I find that the CEO of Silvercorp has claimed them, and has been tweeting about it.
I can't think of a single reasonable circumstance that fits all the facts we know about this. As crazy as it all looks, I can't come up with a theory that seems more likely than "the Venezuelan government is telling the truth".
People talk of "keyboard warriors". Here they are. There's an entire subculture that believes that individual ownership of firearms is going to enable them to carry out counter-revolutions. For most this is just a delusion that they talk about constantly. For these guys it was a delusion that they brought to action.
This feels like "bait", but I'll take it.
Perhaps the most confusing part of this is that the two Americans that were involved weren't "keyboard warriors". They were actually trained Navy Seals. Why they would go along with the apparent coup attempt makes absolutely no sense.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that this is exactly how it's being presented: Silvercorp was hired by the son of an imprisoned Venezuelan general to assist in overthrowing the Maduro government and presumably installing his father as leader. There are so many questions that have no reasonable answers.
Let's focus on the two Americans, Luke Denman and Airan Berry.
Why would they go along with a plan where it's obvious to anyone with any experience (or basic logic, honestly) that there is effectively no chance of success?
Why would they proceed, after reportedly being contacted by the CIA in Jamaica and informed that their operation was compromised and that the Venezuelan authorities were waiting for them?
Why would the CEO of the mercenary company be tweeting about an operation in progress?
What's up with the "gear" they were allegedly captured with?
The photos I've seen from this make absolutely no sense.
They had an Airsoft AR-15, still in the box? OK, maybe they were planning to use it to bluff their way to real weapons... but that doesn't make sense either, because the flash hider was orange.
Speaking of Airsoft, much of the gear photographed was designed for Airsoft. The masks, for instance, are on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DNWR2QK/
They had three "Beta C-MAG" AR magazines. Those at least appeared to be real, but are a terrible choice! They're notoriously unreliable, and there are better, cheaper options available. A C-MAG is a 100-round drum magazine that retails for ~$250. Surefire makes the MAG5-100, a 100-round "stick" magazine, for ~$190. The Surefire is well-respected, reliable, and far better balanced. It also doesn't stick out a foot on each side of the rifle, so it's a whole lot easier to move around with.
They were captured with 14 pistol braces. Huh? The whole point of a pistol brace is to comply with US law - the National Firearms Act of 1934 requires that a rifle have a barrel of >16", and that a pistol be designed to fire with one hand. Pistol braces ostensibly are intended to sit along the user's forearm to provide support for the wrist; they're "not designed to be fired from the shoulder", the fact that they're the same approximate profile as a standard stock notwithstanding. What purpose would an accessory whose sole purpose is to comply with US law be taken to Venezuela on an ill-considered military filibuster? Pistol braces show up fairly often in northern Mexico in the hands of the cartel, sure, but that makes sense because those are obviously purchased in the US and smuggled across the border to be issued to their low-level soldiers. Here, though? They weren't even attached to guns! Either they were intended to be attached to guns already in country, or they were removed from guns earlier and carried along with them anyhow. Neither makes any sense at all.
They were allegedly captured by a fisherman, shown in photos with a handgun. The same series of photos show four ARs... with pistol braces. Why would four guys in a boat with rifles allow themselves to be "captured" by a random fisherman on shore with a pistol?
Finally, and honestly the weirdest part of all to me - who decides to pack along every form of ID they have ever been issued when attempting to overthrow the government of a foreign country? Passports, military ID, even expired VA benefits cards. There were multiple copies of the same ID cards photographed, along with individual passport photos (like you'd get at Walgreens in the US if you were getting your passport).
None of this makes any sense.
That ID is expired and has been for years. I've got one like it, similarly expired. The certs on them don't work, and most military facilities are pretty diligent about checking the expiration date - that's why its in bold on the front. They're not useful for anything, should've been replaced with a veteran's ID, very unusual to carry.
It seems like it would make even less sense to have it on you if you decided to take a dozen of your friends and try to overthrow a foreign government. What possible purpose would that ID card serve?
I can see carrying your passport, and maybe a single piece of ID showing you to be a US military veteran. It doesn't seem wise... but none of this seems wise. I can't see even a very flawed thought process leading to "I should definitely bring this long-expired identification with me. Just in case."
Part Kayfabe, part vaporware startup, part grift, part the Producers. The guy spent a lot of time in the rightwing griftersphere, where selling terrible ideas to rich people is the norm. In North America this is easy; you can sell unlimited bullshit and the chances of you, personally, experiencing any consequences are near zero. Alex Jones ran the scam for years until he finally crossed a line, and his attempts to claim it was all kayfabe "entertainment" in the Sandy Hook libel case failed. This may not be true in South America.
I reckon these guys were running some sort of coup-for-hire scam. Getting paid to talk about coup plotting, getting to go to fancy parties among the government-in-exile. The problem came when one of the fish bit the hook and wouldn't let go. Someone gave him a chunk of money upfront. And that someone had narco connections (where the got the money from). And they start asking when he's going to make this coup happen. Possibly they make credible death threats if he doesn't.
Having made promises to organised crime, he finds himself having to .. organise a crime. He knows it won't work, but he wants to do the minimum to convince his backers that he tried while maximising the chances of it failing _early_ so the coup plotters can be arrested and bailed rather than shot dead. Hence the ineffective and toy weapons; bank robbers often use imitation firearms to reduce their charges if caught.
The large pile of ID is there to aid a "don't you know who I am" blag attempt against his captors. The tweet is also part of that: getting the president to retroactively approve his actions is a long shot, but it worked for Eddie Gallagher.
(Getting the co-conspirators along with this is harder to explain, especially as several of them were killed, but presumably they weren't told it was expected to fail...)
I didn't address this part in my other post. I spent too much time listing out the things that didn't make sense to get to it :)
While I wouldn't phrase my beliefs that way, I'm confident I'm part of the subculture to which you're referring. We (well.. "I") don't have any illusions that a handful of guys with small arms is going to be carrying out a counter-revolution. From a political standpoint, we see the individual right to arms as a means to keep government wary of overstepping too greatly.
I think it is a positive thing for lawmakers to be acutely aware that the people they serve have the ability to do violence against them. After all - laws are ultimately enforced through violence and the threat thereof.
That said, while I'm personally certainly not going to be trying to overthrow any foreign governments, based on this story I'm better equipped than people who do attempt it.
>By the time the video was first shared on Twitter, eight of Goudreau’s men were dead and two others captured as the boat they were on was intercepted at sea by the Venezuelan authorities. A second boat, soon on its way to Venezuela, would also be intercepted at sea the following day, resulting in the capture of eight of Goudreau’s men, including two American citizens.
The videos were in or subtitled in Spanish, so my take on it is that because they had not seized TV or radio stations in the country, they took to Twitter to get their message out. It could have been a call for support from the populace.
[0] https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/05/05/the-invasion-of-v...
The one in Brazil with extensive use of lawfare and the media was exemplary too. Very well played.
Regardless, even if the presented facts are "true" (whatever that means), there simply must be more to the story.
As I've outline elsewhere in these comments, there are tons of things that make absolutely zero sense about this.
The article presents a series of claims, and then presents evidence for those claims. Do you have any evidence that contradicts those claims or that Silvercorp didn't launch a failed coup besides your disagreement with the writer's politics?
Apparently. What I see is a text simulation of a tweet that is decidedly not a picture.
> Do you have any evidence that Silvercorp didn't launch a failed coup
Nope, which is why I didn't say that. The presented story is that an American company attempts a coup and is both on video and tweets about their involvement, implying this is at the behest of the US Government. This implication is wholly unsubstantiated.
That implication isn't in there either? The nearest they come is referencing previous (real) US coup attempts in Latin America.
Another source, with sources: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/05/05/the-invasion-of-v...
> That implication isn't in there either?
Are you trolling or did you not read the article? The entire first paragraph is purposefully doing this. In fact, I was probably wrong for calling it an implication in the first place as they are pretty explicit:
"Normally when people practice a thing for a very long time, they become competent at it. The U.S. government, for example, has invested decades, troops, and money into its traditional activities south of the border. By this, I mean coups. The U.S. has never met a left-wing Latin American political figure it did not want to overthrow, and you would think that after a while, they’d get good at it — and that this skill, honed over so many generations, would perhaps trickle down from the CIA and sundry special forces to our patriotic mercenaries.
Enter Silvercorp USA."
For example: https://twitter.com/telesurenglish/status/125749192310910976...
> . @NicolasMaduro : Among the terrorist captured today they were 2 U.S. military officials from Texas. According to a member of the band they are "intermediaries with Trump's head of security". Their names are Luke Denman and Aaron Barry, members of the company Silver Corp.