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Bolivia’s Trial By Fire

Benjamin Dangl January 12, 2006 Benjamin Dangl

After winning a landslide election victory on December 18th, Bolivian president-elect Evo Morales announced plans to nationalize the country's gas reserves, rewrite the constitution in a popular assembly, redistribute land to poor farmers and change the rules of the U.S.-led war on drugs in Bolivia. If he follows through on such promises, he'll face enormous pressure from the Bush administration, corporations and international lenders. If he chooses a more moderate path, Bolivia's social movements are likely to organize the type of protests and strikes that have ousted two presidents in two years. In the gas-rich Santa Cruz region, business elites are working toward seceding from the country to privatize the gas reserves. Meanwhile, U.S. troops stationed in neighboring Paraguay may be poised to intervene if the Andean country sways too far from Washington's interests. For Bolivian social movements and the government, 2006 will be a trial by fire.

Burma: Darkness at Midnight

Rene Wadlow January 11, 2006 Rene Wadlow

While the United Nations human rights structures are under critical examination and Burma is being discussed in the UN Security Council, it is useful to review the UN's efforts to help a transition occur in the country. The military's responses have always been temporary with minor modifications of its heavy-handed rule. In December, at the Security Council, the Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs, Ibrahim Gambari, warned "In the longer term, deep-rooted chronic and accelerating poverty, growing insecurity and increasing political tension appear to be moving Myanmar toward a humanitarian crisis."

Dear Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice

Kenyon Farrow January 10, 2006 Kenyon Farrow

When I first decided to write you, I was ready to go for the jugular. I wanted to let you know, in no uncertain terms, just how much I disagreed with your political positions, abhorred your relationship with the Bush clan, and anything else I could think of. I decided I was going to look through every nook and cranny, leave no stone unturned in search of what would be some faulty move, a misspoken word, or some sort of flaw that I would use to turn you out on paper. I downloaded whatever I could find on you: commencement addresses, interviews, speeches, and your famous remarks to the 9-11 Commission. I even went to the bookstore, and purchased some right-wing puff piece posing as a biography. Just as I was preparing to write, you were nearing the end of your tenure as National Security Advisor, and nearing your Senate confirmation as the new Secretary of State. And I was poised to give you what the Black gay children call a “read.” read more

The Politics of Depoliticization and the End of History

Tom Crumpacker January 9, 2006 Tom Crumpacker

"This is the time when things which till then had been communicated but never exchanged; given but never sold; acquired but never bought -- virtue, love, conviction, knowledge, conscience, etc. -- when everything, in short, passed into commerce. It is the time of great corruption, of universal venality...." Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, 1845.

Before the Coup: Haiti’s Achievements Under Aristide and Lavalas

Stephen Lendman January 5, 2006 Stephen Lendman

The long-suffering people of Haiti suffered a catastrophic blow in February, 2004 when U.S. Marines kidnapped and deposed democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The U.S., supported by Canada and France, forced him into exile, forbade him from even returning to the hemisphere, and reestablished a despotic interim puppet government backed and enforced by so-called UN peacekeepers and a brutal Haitian National Police.

A Timely Study Highlights Violence Against Thai Women

Elayne Clift January 4, 2006 Elayne Clift

The first World Health Organization (WHO) study on domestic violence couldn't have come at a better time for women's advocates in Thailand. As they scrutinized a pending domestic violence law - against the backdrop of the United Nations' International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Nov. 25 - WHO's report, "Women's Health and Domestic Violence against Women Study," underscored the extent of the problem in this southeast Asian country, one of 11 included in the research.