Want more hard numbers behind the Media Luna and autonomy movement? Like how 0.2 percent of land holders control 50 percent of Bolivia's arable land?
So, that brown-skinned Bolshevik, Evo can't seem for even one minute to hold his tongue of tyrannical hatred against the freedom fighter opposition, our last best hope for saving Bolivia from a future genocide of slave-labor gulags and injun cannibalism. So dedicated to resurrecting Pol Pot's corpse, Evo even recently stated that he is "afraid of a revolution"... Huh, wait... what?
...rather than a resource stockpile for corporate looting as it has previously been confused. This according to a British Court of Appeals which unanimously told Telecom Italia that Bolivia's state assets held in British banks are protected under "sovereign immunity", so Telecom Italia will just have to suck up recent nationalization of its shares in Bolivia's telecom company Entel. I bet Italia is beginning to really regret their refusal of Evo's original offers to buyout their Entel shares. "How dare that Indian call our bluff!"
If you want to understand what the big picture behind recent political maneuvers and tactics of Bolivia's conservative opposition you would do well to watch Patricio Guzman's master piece, La Batalle de Chile documenting a successful golpe de estado. The three part film is one the most complete records of the final months of Salvador Allende's presidency, brilliantly capturing Chile's political and social dynamics leading up to the coup.
Follow the link and meet Carmen Rosa, Bolivia's champion female wrestler. (Guardian link)
The AP is perplexed as to why Evo's counter narcotics program is more effective than the US "zero coca" policy. Except read down and Kathryn Ledebur of the Andean Information Network tells them straight up, "The U.S. required growers to quit planting coca before they could access alternative development programs, without considering that their families needed to eat. Now the cato guarantees the farmers' income, giving them the chance to take risks with new crops." Oh right, people need to eat. I forgot brown people do that too.
President of Bolivia, Evo Morales:
International trade can play a major role in the promotion of economic development and the alleviation of poverty. We recognize the need for all our peoples to benefit from the increased opportunities and welfare gains that the multilateral trading system generates. The majority of WTO members are developing countries. We seek to place their needs and interests at the heart of the Work Programme adopted in this Declaration. Doha World Trade Organization Ministerial Declaration, November 14, 2001
With these words began the WTO round of negotiations seven years ago. In reality, are economic development, the alleviation of poverty, the needs of all our peoples, the increased opportunities for developing countries at the center of the current negotiations at the WTO?
(Continue reading at Upside Down World)
Inca Kola News delivers another by the numbers smack down of Evo's critics. Not only is this revolutionary socialist campesino better at managing Bolivia's finances than his neoliberal "capitalism is the end of history" predecessors but he is also infinitely generous towards his racist and fascist sympathizing enemies in the Media Luna, having more than doubled their share of natural gas revenue as consequence of that "controversial" hydrocarbons nationalization. So when the conservative opposition or "neutral" third party observers (such as the International Crisis Group) call his national pension program an unjust infringement on department budgets because it's financed from the same money pool, they look like real douchebags, or just plain stupid.Evo misses the bullet
(Stolen from Inca Kola News)
The Copter
Yesterday afternoon, a helicopter crashed in the Cochabamba region of Bolivia. All people on board, four Venezuelan army personnel and a Major in the Bolivian army, died in the crash. The Super Puma copter which normally carries up to 20 people was on loan to Bolivia from Venezuela, and is the same one that transports President Evo Morales around Bolivia on his frequent trips to visit towns cities villages.
This is the second crash involving loaned Venezuelan helicopters in Bolivia. But it's the closest one to becoming an enormous international incident, as Evo used the very same helicopter to travel to Cochabamba that morning.
Funny how many Latin American presidents get involved in air crashes, innit?
Then this photo from 2004 shows up featuring former president Tuto, current leader of the conservative opposition PODEMOS party posing with members of F-10 in Miami which government minister Alfredo Rada claims was taken by accused bomber Nava.
Now Evo is all like, duh. 'These guys are scared of democracy and will even stage bombings to get out of being recalled.' And I bet this all will at least implicitly come up when Evo meets with US Secretary of Hemispheric Affairs tomorrow.
Remember that NGO, the International Crisis Group whose latest report on Bolivia was way off the mark? Well, yesterday the ICG Vice President Alain Délétroz seemed to be trying to make up to Evo a little bit by stating, "There can be no forgetting that the government of Morales is the first in Bolivian history to have achieved in filling the State treasury. Before, at the end of each year, the President had to go to Washington to beg. Furthermore, his use of the money is reasonable."
Yesterday was the anniversary of the assassination of one of Bolivia's greatest champions for justice and equality, Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz. Marcelo Quiroga was a poet, journalist, statesman, author of Bolivia's second Hydrocarbons nationalization (Evo is the third), and founder of Bolivia's Socialist Party. A political prisoner during the René Barrientos dictatorship, exile during the dictatorship of Hugo Banzer, Marcelo Quiroga was ultimately murdered along with other leaders of the Socialist Party during the "Cocaine Putsch" of 1980, installing strongman Luis García Meza with the open support of drug traffickers, Nazi fugitive Klaus Barbie (a.k.a., Butcher of Lyon), and Italian neofascist veteran of Operation Gladio and Condor, Stefano Delle Chiaie. Unlike what you will read in the press, the true successors to Bolivia's former dictators, drug lords, and Nazi sympathizers are to be found in the current rightwing opposition. Evo Morales' supporters look back on a different historical tradition, found in the likes of men such as Marcelo Quiroga.
Why all the establishment hate for that non-offensive teddy bear, Evo? Inca Kola News cuts right to the heart of the matter: it's got something to do with the above graph, and billions of dollars. Billions of dollars in revenue assets Evo's government, unlike all previous administrations, is actually being fiscally responsible with, broken down again by Inca Kola News in the one of most sensible discussion of the Bolivian economy you're likely to read anywhere. So explain to me why an uneducated Indian like Evo is able to handle Bolivia's economy better than all the previously highly distinguished 'Chicago Boys' who occupied the Presidential Palace? And why anyone still listen to those guys?
The English language press finally found an indigenous politician in Bolivia they like, a tia tomasina (uncle tom) willing to sell her soul to racist bigots for the illusion of power (cartoon-La Razon). Chuquisaca's new Prefect, Sabina Cuellar is featured by Reuters as an alternative to Evo, an Indian for the right-wing autonomy movement continually praised by the press. "We have decided to call for a [autonomy] referendum ... once I take office we'll decide when,"...she means when her handlers in the Inter-institutional Committee decide (Sucre's conservative civic committee).
The Bolivian Presidental and departmenal Prefect recall referendum is fast approaching August 10th. Evo's approval ratings are consistently above the mandate required to pass the vote, but the opposition Prefects have realized their "autonomous" constituents aren't to hot for these racist, corrupt assholes.Evo appointed Luzmila Carpio Bolivia's Ambassador to France in 2006.
After recalling his ambassador to Bolivia for a second time after Evo made another astute observation, that the United States is looking to establish a military base in Peru- under the cover of the war on drugs. Garcia responded by saying that Evo ought to "shut up" and now is referring his complaint of Evo's rhetorical "interference" in Peruvian internal affairs to the Organization of American States! As if the rest of Latin America is going to join with Alan and tell that uppity Indian to be quiet. Maybe he is just jealous of Evo's approval rating? This clown is too easy to poke fun at.
The embattled US ambassador Philip Goldberg came back to Bolivia with his tail between his legs, admitting after a meeting with Bolivian officials that US-Bolivia relations have "problems". Wait, did someone from the US State Department just admit they have problems! Is the sky falling?
The International Crisis Group's latest report on Bolivia, "Rescuing the New Constitution and Democratic Stability" gets a smack down of a critical review from the Andean Information Network. The ICG's report is so chalk full of misrepresentations, omissions, and "factual inaccuracies" that the AIN's review is only part 1 of wading through this joke exercise in "conflict prevention", as the ICG claims is their mission (what ever happened to "conflict resolution"?). The AIN is entirely too kind to the ICG for passing off this apologetic straight out of the mouths of the conservative opposition as objective fact finding fieldwork. The AIN correctly notes that if the ICG's recommendations were followed the likely result would actually be a deepening and intensification of political conflict in Bolivia. Go read the reports if you feel like raising your blood pressure and getting a headache.
In latest developments on that Yacuiba bombing, Venezuela rebuffed as "baseless" opposition party accusations of their involvement in the incident. While concrete evidence linking the accused bomber Jorge Nava to either the Presidential Palace or Venezuelan Embassy has yet to appear, we can be certain that Nava is a member of Bolivia's "Counterterrorist" force. How do I know? because here are the documents, clear as the light of day. For anyone who knows anything about the history and nature of "counter" terrorism in Latin America, its links to the "Drug War" and United States' military, this revelation should bump your suspicion level about accusations by the opposition of "state terrorism" by Evo up to "Code Red".
