Abiding in Bolivia

Bolivian President Evo Morales at Cancún Climate Summit: WikiLeaks Cables Reveal "Diplomacy of Empire"

2010-12-10T08:45:00.001-08:00

Operation Payback: hackers speak out

2010-12-10T00:10:00.000-08:00

Alvaro Linera smacks down state censorship

2010-12-08T21:58:00.000-08:00

With his judo chop!! motherfuckers

Pretty boy, Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Linera has set up a mirror of Wikileaks on the official vice-presidental website, because that is how we role in Bolivia! AP article (h/t Bolivia Rising) and link to the website!!!!!

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correction: Alvaro Linera is not a "pretty boy", but a "silver fox". Thanks Bina!

The War is on Bitches

2010-12-08T21:46:00.001-08:00

Don't Shoot Messenger for Revealing Uncomfortable Truths

2010-12-07T13:28:00.000-08:00

WIKILEAKS deserves protection, not threats and attacks.

By Julian Assange

December 07, 2010 "The Australian" --IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win."

His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch's expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.

I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.

These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.

WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.

People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.

If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.

WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain's The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be "taken out" by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden", a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a "transnational threat" and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister's office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.

And Australians should observe with no pride the disgraceful pandering to these sentiments by Julia Gillard and her government. The powers of the Australian government appear to be fully at the disposal of the US as to whether to cancel my Australian passport, or to spy on or harass WikiLeaks supporters. The Australian Attorney-General is doing everything he can to help a US investigation clearly directed at framing Australian citizens and shipping them to the US.

Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.

We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn't want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings.

Has there been any response from the Australian government to the numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality. The Prime Minister and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not.

Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: "You'll risk lives! National security! You'll endanger troops!" Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can't be both. Which is it?

It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US, with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn't find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.

But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:

► The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.

► King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US to attack Iran.

► Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran's nuclear program stopped by any means available.

► Britain's Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect "US interests".

► Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament.

► The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.

In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government". The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.

Julian Assange is the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.

Pablo Solon Responds to Secret U.S. Manipulation of Climate Talks Revealed in WikiLeaks Cable

2010-12-06T10:05:00.001-08:00

Bolivia, bad information and the State Department

2010-12-05T10:04:00.000-08:00

by David Knowlton

The release of thousands of secret documents by WikiLeaks justifiably troubles the U.S. government, but it also provides the rest of us with a window into the information on which American foreign policy is based.

Though the window is broken and dirty, quite a lot can still be seen through it, and those glimpses are useful for evaluating our government and its policies.

Bolivia is one of the countries besides Cuba and Venezuela that troubles the United States in Latin America. Among the documents made public by WikiLeaks is a memorandum from the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia reporting on the buildup to that country’s Jan. 25, 2009, referendum on a new constitution. As a scholar who specializes in the study of Bolivia, I find the published memo important. It suggests how the United States filters information about a country in problematic ways that may well become the basis for making important decisions.

The Ambassador Has No Clothes

2010-12-03T02:11:00.000-08:00

By Ben Dangl

A classified cable from the US embassy in La Paz, Bolivia released by WikiLeaks lays bare an embassy that is biased against the Evo Morales government, underestimates the sophistication of the governing party’s grassroots base, and out of touch with the political reality of the country.

The recently released January 23, 2009 cable, entitled “Bolivia’s Referendum: Margin of Victory Matters,” analyzes the political landscape of the country in the lead up to the January 2009 referendum on the country’s new constitution, and was sent to all US embassies in South America and various offices in Washington.

Fun with Fox News and Polls

2010-11-27T18:34:00.000-08:00

Fox News is having a tantrum that some Indian named Evo Morales thinks he has the right to tell Defense Secretary Gates a bunch of true statements to his face just because Morales is the President of a sovereign country or something. Why give "50 million dollars" in aid to Bolivia when they act like an independent country? The ever insightful FoxNews readership has chimed in with their own reasons in the comments. We have selected a few choice responses (without modifications!) and are asking your humble opinion as to which is the best. Put your thinking caps on!

1. chrisj49:
Stop the foreign aide, stop paying the UN, let them fend for themselves I doesn't matter what we do they still hate us. Let's give them a good reason. If they become a direct threat to us wipe them out

2. bolivianwingnut:
YeeHaw! Finally I am reading a news article that honestly desrcibes President Evo Morales presidencey. I have lived in Bolivia and watched it take place! I have felt for years that the US should cut off all aid. Every single penny. If that had been done long ago maybe they would have realized how great a help it is and also see the error of their ways. Socialism doesn't work!

3. flyingpossum:
Yes! We need to keep supporting them. Their women are the sickest, freakiest ho-ma's in all of the Americas (except maybe Venezuela). We need to keep them fed and breeding so as to maintain a constant supply of young, servile wenches for wealthy Americans to use for entertainment.

4. blackshirt:
In our current state of affairs and with the economy the way it is, I do not believe we should be giving money to anyone. If you do not have it, Don't give it away. How is giving something that you do not own different from stealing?

Adams Family Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T15:17:00.001-08:00

Evo never fails

2010-11-22T17:18:00.000-08:00

To tell it how it is... and this time Defense Secretary Gates had to listen at the OAS meeting of defense secretaries held in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

Bina has the full take down.

We will miss Chalmers Johnson

2010-11-21T09:14:00.000-08:00

Pulse Media sums up my thought:

The great Chalmers Johnson is no more. An examplary scholar, Johnson metamorphosed from a hardline Cold Warrior into one of the most formidable critics of the American Empire, mapping its ever expanding imperium of bases. His 2000 book Blowback was prophetic, and his subsequent books The Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis have been equally prescient. Each one is a must read.

continue to Pulse listen to an interview with Johnson

The Hidden Torture Cells of Bolivia

2010-11-20T08:16:00.000-08:00

The following article is by the Robert Baird, the journalist who uncovered the history of US support for the Hugo Banzer 1971 coup, and is on the secret torture cells that operated during the dictatorship, that Bolivian investigators are just now bringing to light. Link to Narrative Magazine and support this true journalist's work!

Robert Baird

They Were about to let him go. After ten days of torture in a circuit of secret prisons, they were about to let him go. The first night they had taken him to the basement of the Interior Ministry and had beaten him with boards and rifle butts until he couldn’t see, until he could no longer remember what they wanted or why he was there. The second night they had locked him in a cell on the third floor with a tiny window that looked down on the roof of the United Nations building next door.They had jammed needles under his fingernails and shocked his teeth and testicles with a cattle prod. The third night they had taken him to the Department of Political Order and beat him some more, as they would each successive night. Editing was his crime: the ministry’s civilian agents had discovered his handwritten corrections in the margins of a subversive typescript. But ten days of what you might call enhanced interrogation techniques had satisfied the agents that Marcos Farfán was a naive student, a small fish, someone they could safely toss back. After all, they must have figured, how much could he really know? He was only sixteen.

Link to whole article

Distortion on the Andes: Showcasing fake indigenous leaders

2010-11-20T07:55:00.000-08:00

Andean Information Network

In 2011, the newly elected House of Representatives will likely move U.S. foreign policy in Latin America toward intervention. Right-wing politicians in the U.S. maintain close ties with Latin American elite. In recent years, many of these opposition leaders have appealed to U.S. conservative interests in their region, expressing concern about their loss of power at the ballot box in countries such as Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador.

On November 17, the Americas Forum and the Hudson Institute will sponsor an event in the Capitol Visitors Center entitled “Danger in the Andes,” presenting a slate of speakers on terrorism, radical Islam, drug trafficking and threats to democracy and human rights. Speakers include the new leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as Otto Reich, Roger Noriega and John Walters, architects of Latin American foreign policy under Reagan and both Bush administrations. The organizers have also invited well-known critics of the Venezuelan and Ecuadorian governments, in addition to three Bolivian guests.

Coup University: SOUTHCOM and FIU Team Up on Counterinsurgency

2010-11-13T08:53:00.000-08:00

Adrienne Pine

As it has done with great success throughout the past century, the U.S. militarycontinues to find ways to use the academy and anthropological concepts to whitewash its imperialist actions in the service of U.S. corporate profits. In Latin America from 1963-1965, Project Camelot set a dark precedent for the use of social science to abet and legitimate counterinsurgency operations including psychological warfare. Now, the U.S. Military's Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), the Pentagon's arm in Latin America and responsible for all U.S. bases the region, and Florida International University (FIU) have partnered in the creation of a so-called "Strategic Culture" Initiative, a center that hosts workshops and issues reports on the "strategic culture" of different Latin American countries. At present, reports have been issued from Argentina; Bolivia; Brazil; Chile; Colombia; Cuba; Ecuador; El Salvador; Guatemala; Haiti; Nicaragua; Peru; and Venezuela.

continue reading...

Arce Gomez reveals location of Marcelo Quiroga's remains

2010-11-11T20:25:00.000-08:00

Luis Arce Gomez, the former Interior Minister to the brutal dictator Luis Garcia Meza has revealed the location of the remains of Marcelo Quiroga (left). Marcelo Quiroga was a tireless champion for democratic socialism in Bolivia, founder of the Bolivian Socialist party, and murdered during the Meza's 1980 "Cocaine Coup".

Gomez has revealed that Quiroga's remains were flown to Santa Cruz and buried on the property of Hugo Banzer's private home, the US backed rightwing dictator who ruled during the 1970s. Try to act surprised.

Photo of the Day

2010-10-29T16:48:00.000-07:00

Alcoholika - I am Bolivia

2010-10-18T00:11:00.001-07:00

Dancing with Dynamite

2010-10-17T07:57:00.000-07:00

Kari Lydersen, In These Times

Reviewed: Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America by Benjamin Dangl, (October, 2010: AK Press).

What happens after you win?

That is, as fearless grassroots social movements have brought leftist, pro-worker parties to power in one after another Latin American country during the past decade, how do these movements maintain true democracy and commitment to the rights of the marginalized once faced with the challenge of a neoliberal global economy?

After the wave of worker factory takeovers following its economic collapse a decade ago, such questions played out on smaller scales in Argentina. Taking cooperative control of the factories was only the first step; the workers had to actually run them competitively in a capitalist economy. Similarly, after movements of union members, indigenous activists and other previously marginalized people bring leaders like Bolivian Evo Morales and Venezuelan Hugo Chavez to power, how do they make sure their struggles aren't declawed and co-opted by the new government?

In his captivating book Dancing with Dynamite, Ben Dangl explores the complicated choreography between unfettered popular struggle and the state institutions that are necessary to a functioning civil society—yet by nature are forces of moderation, compromise and cooperation.

The anti-racism and discrimination law in Bolivia

2010-10-16T10:06:00.000-07:00

Andean Information Network

On October 8, Bolivian President Evo Morales signed the “Law against Racism and all Forms of Discrimination” (O45) into effect. Despite protests from journalists across the country, the Bolivian Legislative Assembly passed the law without modifying contested articles 16 and 23, which outline potential penalties for members of the media who publish racist or discriminatory ideas

While the majority of national and international criticism has focused on how this law might potentially limit freedom of speech in Bolivia, the measure’s twenty-four articles go far beyond simply regulating the media to combat racism and discrimination in all public and private institutions. International accords on racism and discrimination provide the foundation to address the long history of these problems in Bolivia.

The Bolivian representative of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (UNHCHR), Denis Racicot, declared support for this new law, but has cautioned the Bolivian government to implement these changes carefully and gradually, and concentrate on resolving the current dispute with the Bolivian press. It remains to be seen how the Morales administration will address the current conflict. Law 045 has the potential to bring much needed change to Bolivia, but its stipulations and penalties must be clearly defined and sensibly executed to quell the current conflict. Furthermore, press protests about the possible prosecution under the law fail to recognize, that, when accused, clauses in Article 23 allow the offender to formally apologize for racist or discriminatory insults to avoid penalties. The media should work with the MAS administration to ensure that penalties for the press are appropriate to the violation (e.g. community service over prison sentences) and do not limit free speech. Furthermore, Bolivian law has placed limits on freedom of the press since the passage of the Press Law in 1925. This new legislation includes racism and discrimination as additional limitations.

"Hostland": Yes, it is a conspiracy

2010-10-05T10:13:00.000-07:00

US Military training film (1968) showing psychological operations in "Hostland," a mythical (probably Latin American) country, designed to aid the host government in gaining the support of the population. From the Internet Media Archive:

Morales knees opposition in the balls

2010-10-04T14:53:00.000-07:00

From IKN: This is must-see footage. Over the weekend President Evo Morales played in a 'friendly' football (soccer if you like) game for the government MAS team versus the opposition MSM party, the party that holds the mayorship of La Paz. After a dirty tackle and some sort of mouthing off by the MSM team, Evo took justice into his own hands, footy field style

MSM is a center-left party that officially broke its coalition with MAS earlier this year before municipal and regional elections. Tension between the parties rose several weeks ago after it was announced that the Mayor of La Paz, here the MSM team captian, is under investigation for corruption.

Marcela Sanchez misses the mark on Morales

2010-10-03T08:25:00.000-07:00

Andean Information Network

Marcela Sanchez’ article, “Ambition’s Costs — The Ongoing Evolution of Bolivia’s Evo Morales,” published in theLatin American Herald Tribune comments on U.S. decertification of Bolivian drug control efforts, the draft anti-racism law, and ex-president’s Jorge Quiroga’s defamation sentence. Sanchez she tries to connect these disparate issues with loose analysis and apparently little research.

In less than 800 words, Sanchez manages to misconstrue the dynamics of the drug trade, Morales’ alleged manipulation of the legal system and the potential impact of anti- racism legislation on freedom of the press in Bolivia.

Morales: Nature, Forests, and Indigenous peoples are not for sale

2010-10-02T10:17:00.000-07:00

Letter from Morales to the indigenous peoples of the world:

Indigenous brothers of the world:

I am deeply concerned because some pretend to use leaders and indigenous groups to promote the commoditization of nature and in particular of forest through the establishment of the REDD mechanism (Reduction Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) and its versions REDD+ REED++.

Every day an extension of forests and rainforest equivalent to 36,000 football fields disappears in the world. Each year 13 million hectares of forest and rain forest are lost. At this rate, the forests will disappear by the end of the century.

The forests and rainforest are the largest source of biodiversity. If deforestation continues, thousands of species, animals and plants will be lost forever. More than three quarters of accessible fresh water zones come from uptake zones in forests, hence the worsening of water quality when the forest condition deteriorates. Forests provide protection from flooding, erosion and natural disasters. They provide non-timber goods as well as timber goods. Forests are a source of natural medicines and healing elements not yet discovered. Forests and the rainforest are the lungs of the atmosphere. 18% of all emissions of greenhouse gases occurring in the world are caused by deforestation.

It is essential to stop the destruction of our Mother Earth.

Ecuador Declares State of Emergency as President Correa Escapes Attack from Rogue Armed Forces

2010-10-01T08:20:00.001-07:00