Morales says U.S. soldiers should leave Bolivia

Source: Associated Press

<snip>

"President Evo Morales said he expects U.S. military aid to Bolivia to stop soon, as his government plans to bar U.S. troops from assisting in anti-drug operations.

"Happily, it's ending," Morales told reporters at a news conference Tuesday night. "No foreigner in uniform will be operating here."

Bolivia is the world's No. 3 producer of cocaine, after Colombia and Peru. Washington last year provided US$91 million (€64 million) to help fight cocaine production and encourage Bolivian coca farmers to switch crops.

U.S. aid has paid for everything from Bolivian troops' uniforms to the gasoline in their trucks since the 1980s. But U.S. soldiers have not been directly involved in anti-narcotics efforts, leaving that task to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration personnel and State Department contractors instead.

It's not clear if Morales would ban their involvement in Bolivian anti-drug efforts, too."


Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/10/america/LA-GEN-Bolivia-US-Military.php

Bolivia has been their money-trough for quite some time.

Oh, what the hell, there's always Columbia and Ecuador.

Our pResidents have been Bolivia's bestest friend, for sure. For anyone who needs his/her memory "refreshened," here's a quick look at how fantastically generous this country has been to Bolivia:

COLONEL HUGO BANZER
President of Bolivia

In 1970, in Bolivia, when then-President Juan Jose Torres nationalized Gulf Oil properties and tin mines owned by US interests, and tried to establish friendly relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union, he was playing with fire. The coup to overthrow Torres, led by US-trained officer and Gulf Oil beneficiary Hugo Banzer, had direct support from Washington. When Banzer's forces had a breakdown in radio communications, US Air Force radio was placed at their disposal. Once in power, Banzer began a reign of terror. Schools were shut down as hotbeds of political subversive activity. Within two years, 2,000 people were arrested and tortured without trial. As in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, the native Indians were ordered off their land and deprived of tribal identity. Tens-of-thousands of white South Africans were enticed to immigrate with promises of the land stolen from the Indians, with a goal of creating a white Bolivia. When Catholic clergy tried to aid the Indians, the regime, with CIA help, launched terrorist attacks against them, and this "Banzer Plan" became a model for similar anti-Catholic actions throughout Latin America.
(snip/)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html

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Then, more recently, look how much help an American company gave Bolivia in managing its water!

In 1999, a consortium, controlled by U.S. multinational Bechtel, signed a 40-year deal to increase water supplies and services to Cochabamba, Bolivia. Six months later, rioting Bolivians chased the company out of the country.
(snip)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/features/water/bolivia.html

"Washington last year provided US$91 million (€64 million) to help fight cocaine production and encourage Bolivian coca farmers to switch crops."--AP

Says who? "...to help fight cocaine production" and "ENCOURAGE Bolivian coca farmers to switch crops." ????

"Washington" (i.e., the Bush Junta) is the biggest illicit drug dealer and criminal enterprise on earth. In Colombia--recipient of $4 billion in Bush largesse (our tax money)--the government and the military are rife with rightwing paramilitaries into torture, mass murder and large scale drug trafficking. These rightwing paramilitaries were also plotting to assassinate President Hugo Chavez and other leaders of the Andes democracies (most likely Evo Morales was high on their hit list), and to destabilize their countries in order to re-install rightwing dictatorships.

THAT's who "we" are funding in the phony, murderous "war on drugs," with the Bush Junta in charge. "Encouraging" small farmers to "switch crops"? Right. They spray the small campesinos with toxic pesticides--killing their food crops, their animals and damaging human DNA--to drive them off land they've farmed for a thousand years, into urban squalor, so the big drug dealers and corporate biofuel producers can take over the land. Their excuse is that these small farmers grow a little coca leaf for local use--a crop that is sacred to the indigenous, and is essential to survival in the high altitudes and icy temperatures of the Andes. But it has NOTHING TO DO with "encouraging" small farmers to "switch crops." That is just total bullshit. Its other Bushite purpose is the police state boondoggle, here and there--huge traffic in weapons and military hardware and private mercenary "training" (Blackwater has "training" camps in South America, for Iraq!)

Do we ever get any reduction in illicit drug imports? No. Are our children any safer from bad drugs and street gangs? No. The militarism inflicted on poor South Americans is echoed here in the "prison-industrial complex" and the incarceration of the poor, especially poor blacks, for their desperate efforts to cope with poverty and hopelessness, by trading in drugs. The whole thing--the "war on drugs"--is an extremely corrupt, fascist, and insane cess pool, that is eating children alive.

But AP just blithely presents THE BUSH JUNTA'S total bullshit lies about what these billions and billions of OUR TAX dollars are FOR. They are for fascist insurrection against democratic government in South America. They are for KILLING peasant farmers, union organizers and political leftists. They are for militarizing the western hemisphere. They are for murder, torture, rape, theft of land, theft of resources, and the support of vast criminal enterprises. They are for brutally suppressing the poor, in the north and in the south.

Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador want this fascist money out of their countries, and it is one of the signs of the legitimacy of these governments--along with transparent elections, and widespread public support--that they are taking action on this important matter and ridding their countries of malevolent, Bushite military activity and plots. This is the trend throughout South American, with the Andes democracies leading the way. It is an absolutely wonderful development.

What AP SHOULD DO, at the least, is QUOTE someone in the Bush Junta, who SAYS that "Washington" (that den of iniquity) wants to "fight cocaine production." That way at least we know WHO is lying. They instead present the lies as facts, as a given--when the evidence points to the opposite being true. They might as well just let the Bush State Dept. write their copy--and they probably are!

office. A quick look will reveal who has been running the country just prior to Evo Morales, considering the previous President was raised in the U.S., educated here, and even enlisted James Carville and other U.S. strategists to sell his campaign. He didn't create the problems, and he did inherit them, but things wobbled wildly out of control again during his last term. This article describes the final straws, in a very abbreviated form:

Violence and Chaos- At least 17 Dead
THE POLICE REBEL: VIOLENCE AND CHAOS
Prepared by the Andean Information Network

February 13, 2003

INCOME TAX SETS OF POLICE REBELLION
On February 11, the Bolivian National Police force threw up its hands in La Paz and decided to not leave its stations. Although the force had been a traditional ally of the MNR ruling party, increasing strength of the armed forces, at the expense of internal law enforcement and the economic crisis had caused deep-rooted resentment. Police forces in Cochabamba and Santa Cruz joined the strike on February 12. The « mutiny » is in response to the Sánchez de Lozada government's announcement of a new tax of approximately 12.5% to be deducted from all salaried employees who received more than four times the minimum wage. The tax is in addition to a pre-existing « added value » tax of 12.5%, which would be slightly reduced. The salary deductions (including pension funds) of the average Bolivian would increase to over 30%. As one citizen lamented, « We would have to earn a living wage, before we could pay taxes on it. »
(snip)

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
On February 11, Coca grower leader Evo Morales, as well as other MAS leaders met with the head of the Private Businesspeople's association and were in agreement about their opposition to the « tax slam » as it is being called here. This unlikely alliance reflects the severity of the crisis and the incapacity of the Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada Administration. Protesting sectors and members of the general public expressed growing frustration, as the « reserved funds » portion of the newly announced budgets as well as the military budget remain virtually untouched. Reserved funds are not subject to public scrutiny and include considerable bonuses to government officials sometimes over $10,000 monthly, which are not taxed. That government coalition UCS party leader, Johnny Fernández's family owes over 10,000,000 dollars in back taxes, only exacerbates public outrage. Efforts of the administration, to reduce profits of international oil companies in the nation, proved to be too little, too late, and provoked the subtle admonition from the U.S. Embassy, that it would be better to « enter into dialogue » with the petroleum giants.

MASSACRE IN FRONT OF LA PAZ CAPITOL BUILDING 17 DEAD
At approximately 10 a.m. a group of protestors and police entered the Murillo Plaza. At around noon, students from the Avaroa High School police and threw rocks at the government palace and other buildings in the Murillo Plaza. Although the government had immediately called for support from the armed forces in the morning, the arrived after almost two hours, provoking suspicion that their allegiance to the Goni administration may also be faltering. Additional police streamed into the sector, many from the nearby Special Security Group (GES) headquarters nearby. Ironically, the GES had reinforced its reputation for harsh repression of protesting groups during the two weeks of conflict in mid-January. By one p.m. gunshots rang out and a massive confrontation between police and armed forces began that lasted for most of the afternoon. Police fired tear gas, and firearms. Military fired directly into the crowd, from the plaza and snipers shot at protestors from surrounding buildings.

Accounts of dead (13-18) – the great majority police, from bullet wounds and the approximately 80 wounded vary (Please see list attached at the end of this update). Some channels televised the clash in full, and others closed transmission for a period of several hours. Reports were frequently interrupted by call for blood donors, as city supplies had long run out. The intensity of gunfire increased during the afternoon. Snipers even fired close to a commission of the Permanent Human Rights Assembly attempted to mediate the conflict. Waldo Albarracín, president of this nongovernmental human rights group stated that the military, not the police force, was responsible for the great majority of the gunfire. One expatriate living in La Paz noted many bloodstains in the plaza and hundreds of bullet holes in surrounding buildings.
(snip)

At this time, the great majority of Bolivian public has apparently lost faith in the president's capacity to run the country. Even sectors of the MNR, his own party, have attempted to distance themselves. Public discontentment and uncertainty continues to grow, but no major opposition leader has garnered widespread support. In spite of continued demands for a change in government, no clear alternatives have been presented. International pressure will impede resignation. Any new leader would inherit the intense economic and social problems facing this administration, as well as the intense international pressure from the U.S. and international financial organisms that has aggravated the crisis.
(snip/)

http://nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/imf/bolivia/txt/2003/0214violence.htm

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There's a film making the rounds on the Sundance Channel which anyone could appreciate concerning the U.S. strategists who worked in getting Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada re-elected. Here's a review by the L.A. Times. (The film is also available, of course, from video sources.)

'Our Brand Is Crisis'
Documentary details the hush-hush truths of geopolitics and the challenges of "exporting democracy."
By Kenneth Turan
Times Staff Writer

April 14, 2006

Unlikely as it sounds, a documentary that details with jaw-dropping candor how contemporary political campaigning works at the highest levels of government is set not in this country but in the far-off reaches of Bolivia. Yet the implications of "Our Brand Is Crisis" for how things go down in the United States — and elsewhere — are inescapable.

That's because the "full-service political consulting firm" seen hard at work in Bolivia is not only American, it's high-powered Greenberg Carville Shrum (GCS), the people, personified by James Carville, who helped put Bill Clinton into the White House and now sell their expertise to potential political leaders around the world.

The last documentary Carville was featured in was 1993's "The War Room," which took us inside the ragtag have-not beginnings of what was to be Clinton's successful presidential campaign.

With "Our Brand Is Crisis," by contrast, we not only see how it is for the haves, we get unprecedented access to the hush-hush high-level Bolivian back rooms where schemes are hatched, strategies are worked out and smear campaigns are started.

Because these Washington, D.C.-based operatives epitomize the state of the art in campaigning, the film lets us in on the way politics works in this country as well.

And because GCS finds employment all around the globe, "Our Brand Is Crisis" allows us to see exactly what it means and precisely how difficult it is to "export democracy" to parts of the world with cultures very different from our own.
(snip/...)

http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-et-crisis14apr14,0,393273,print.story?coll=cl-nav-movies

2 minute trailer:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3360276775138600220&q=Our+Brand+Is+Crisis&total=71&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

are capable of conducting the affairs of civics in a logical and rational manner, but only if we are not being lied to daily by the ruling elites, through their propaganda outlets, like the AP.

"Washington last year provided US$91 million (€64 million) to help fight cocaine production and encourage Bolivian coca farmers to switch crops."

This is one of those 'truths', that we are supposed to accept without question, as a matter of fact. Anyone who is skeptical or mentions evidence that disputes the accepted myth, is regarded askance, as if they are prone to 'conspiracy theories' and such.

How I loathe this sort of propaganda.

Thank you for your excellent analyzes and commentary.

Morales Announces End of Bolivian Military Training at ex-US Army School of the Americas
Bolivia is the fifth Latin American country to announce a withdrawal from the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation

WASHINGTON, DC - October 10 – President Evo Morales announced Tuesday that Bolivia will gradually withdraw its military from training programs at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School for the Americas (SOA). Bolivia is the fifth country after Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela to announce a withdrawal from the Fort Benning school, citing its history of collaborating with repressive regimes and human rights abuses.


Morales, a former coca farmer and advocate of indigenous rights, criticized the institution for training Latin American militaries to identify social movement leaders as “enemies of the state.” "We will gradually withdraw until there are no Bolivian officers attending the School of the Americas” said Morales. Questioning the U.S. government foreign policy he noted that “they are teaching high ranking officers to confront their own people, to identify social movements as their enemies.”

The SOA/WHINSEC is a U.S. tax-payer funded military training facility for Latin American security personnel located at Ft. Benning, Georgia. The institution was catapulted into the headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution.

The SOA/WHINSEC has played a significant role in Bolivia’s recent political history, Hugo Banzer Suarez, who ruled Bolivia from 1971-1978 under a brutal military dictatorship attended the school in 1956 and was later inducted into the school’s “hall of fame” in 1988. In October of 2006, two former graduates of the SOA/WHINSEC, Generals Juan Veliz Herrera and Gonzalo Rocabado Mercado were arrested on charges of torture, murder, and violation of the constitution for their responsibility in the death of 67 civilians in El Alto Bolivia during the “Gas Wars” of September-October 2003.
(snip/...)

http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/1010-04.htm

Bolivia Demands Full US Retraction

La Paz, Oct 9 (Prensa Latina) The Bolivian government insisted on Tuesday that US ambassador Philip Goldberg officially take back what he said about President Evo Morales' initiative of moving the UN headquarters to another country.

The Deputy Foreign Minister Hugo Fernandez noted that the executive was not satisfied with the clarification to the press saying that he was only joking when he said that nothing would surprise him if President Morales would like to change, beside the United Nations, the Disney headquarters.

"We want to strengthen bilateral relations and in that sense, by reason of a tasteless joke, inappropriate and considered unacceptable for any country, we have lodged a written complaint," he emphasized.

"That is the diplomatic language and we are expecting a diplomatic response," he remarked.

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People attending a little league baseball game genially showed a light-hearted spirit of appreciation helping _Bush's Ambassador William Brownfield, who had barged over in his convoy to hand out baseball products to the kids, how to get back to the Embassy, in a hurry, by thoughtfully accompanying his limousine for miles, tossing fruits, vegetables, and eggs from a local produce store to mark the way for him.

Bolivia Thwarts Foreign Payoffs

La Paz, Oct 11 (Prensa Latina) The Bolivian government announced through a decree Thursday that moneys from international cooperation will be strictly controlled by the State.

According to Presidential Minister Juan Ramon Quintana, resources destined to the public or private sector must respond to the current legislation and the National Development Plan.

The rule also makes registering donations obligatory to people or private entities from multilateral financial organizations, cooperation agencies, government and non-governmental organizations, he stated.

Donations or their monetary equivalent must be included in institutional budgets and at the Nation's General Budget as well as goods donated or purchased as a result of those sendings, Quintana noted.

The new legislation also prohibits the reception of donations in cash or kind that impedes any political or ideological influence.

The decree also establishes that public entities managing donation resources cannot contract third companies for their management.

The government denounced the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in August for using funds in Bolivia with political aims and with no state control.

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