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	Open Letter to George W. Bush by Ralph Nader CommonDreams.org USA   July 9, 2005   On June 28, 2005 you addressed the nation in prime time about the situation in Iraq. You called the casualties, destruction and suffering in that country "horrifying and real." Then you declared: "I know Americans ask the question: Is the sacrifice worth it? It is worth it," you asserted and went on to explain your position.   My question to you is this: "Who is doing the sacrificing on the US side besides our troops and their families and other Americans whose dire necessities and protections cannot be met due to the diversion of huge spending for the Iraq war and occupation?"   Let''''s start with the wealthy. In the midst of the ravages of war, you gave them a double tax cut, pushing these enormous windfalls through Congress at the same time as concentrations of wealth among the top one percent richest were accelerating.   You also cut taxes for the large corporations that benefit most from arcane, detailed tax legislation. Many of these corporations have profited greatly from the tens of billions of dollars in contracts which you have handed them.   Companies like Halliburton, from which Vice President Dick Cheney receives handsome retirement benefits, keep getting multi-billion contracts even though the Pentagon auditors and investigations by Rep. Henry Waxman have shown vast waste, non-performances, and not a little corruption. Not much corporate sacrifice there.   You and Mr. Cheney need to be reminded that your predecessors pressed, during wartime, for surcharges on corporate profits of the largest corporations. As Rep. Major R. Owens pointed out recently in introducing such legislation (H.R. 1804), the precedents for such an equitable policy, at a time of growing federal deficits, occurred during World War I, World II, the Korean and Vietnam wars. Ponder the difference. Past Presidents increased taxes on the large companies as a way of spreading out the economic sacrifice a little. Instead, during record, even staggering big corporate profits, you reduce their contributions to the US Treasury and military expenditures.   Where is the presence of the sons and daughters of the top political and economic rulers in the Iraq theater, where they can see the suffering of millions of innocent Iraqi people? You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of family members serving over there among the 535 members of Congress, and the White House.  No specific data is available for the families of the CEOs of the Fortune 500. But we can guess that very few are stationed in and around the Sunni triangle these days. Can''''t get much tennis, golf or sailing in, if that were the case. How often have you extolled the patriotic sacrifice of members of the armed forces, the Reserves and the National Guard? How often have you praised their work as the highest form of service to their nation, its security and future. Well, what about your daughters'''' having this sublime opportunity to be on the receiving end of their father''''s encomiums? Remember Major John Eisenhower, among others.   In an earlier unanswered letter, I urged you and Mr. Cheney to announce that you would reject the tens of thousands of dollars in personal tax cuts that passage of your tax cut legislation for the wealthy would have accorded both of your fortunes. Recusing yourselves would have conveyed the message that it is unseemly to sign your own personal tax reduction. It would also have furthered the principle of the moral authority to govern.   Well, you did sign your own tax cut, while tens of thousands of Americans had to leave their employment and small businesses and go to Iraq at a reduced pay and worrying about inadequate protective equipment and insufficient training.   Those rulers who send young men and women into undeclared wars on platforms of fabrications, deceptions, and cover-ups do not have proper incentives for responsible and effective behavior and politics. Some degrees of shared sacrifice provide prudent restraint against the manipulations and recklessness of politicians and the supporting avarice of their fellow oligarchs.   Without some measure of sacrifice, programs are misdesigned to pursue stateless terrorists in ways and areas that actually produce recruitment opportunities for more such terrorists. Note your own CIA Director Porter Goss''''s testimony before the Senate earlier this year. But the resulting warmongering, where the "intelligence and the facts" are fixed to the policy, became unsavory re-election strategies in 2004.   You have often told us that you want to nominate federal judges who believe in a strict construction of the Constitution. How about a President who believes in the strict constitutional authority of Article One, Section Eight which gives Congress and Congress alone the power to declare war? Requiring a declaration of war, together with legislation requiring, upon such a declaration, the conscription of all eligible members of Congressional and White House families would assure that only "unavoidable and necessary wars" are declared and fought.   Sincerely yours, Ralph Nader
	New Bolivian Leader promises early Election by Patrick Markey, Gretchen Gordon Reuters   June 10, 2005   La Paz, Bolivia - Bolivia's Congress on Thursday named Supreme Court President Eduardo Rodriguez to replace Carlos Mesa as president in an effort to end weeks of political crisis in the Andean nation.   Rodriguez, takes over the presidency of a country polarized between indigenous movements demanding more power and wealthy regional provinces pressing for more independence.   Bolivia's new interim president, Eduardo Rodriguez, takes office on Friday with a vow to hold elections. The new president, a lawyer with a master's degree in public administration from Harvard University, is an interim leader who is required by the constitution to call elections later this year.   President Carlos Mesa resigned after three weeks of blockades by the poor Indian majority, who are demanding nationalization of the country's energy reserves and a special constitutional assembly. Protests caused fuel and food shortages in La Paz and stoked fears of violence in South America's poorest nation.   "Constitutional duty has brought me here as a judge, who has a mandate to fulfill and who is convinced Bolivians need democracy, union and peace," Rodriguez said as he was sworn in during an emergency session by the Congress.   Lawmakers, who abandoned earlier attempts to vote on the new president amid violent protests, held a brief late-night session after Senate President Hormando Vaca Diez and the leader of the lower house of Congress both declined to assume the presidency.   The constitution allowed Vaca Diez to replace Mesa, but he faced growing opposition from Indian leaders and many Bolivians who saw him as representative of a failed traditional political class.   "Hopefully this decision will help pacify the country," Mesa said as he left the presidential palace. "I apologize to the country, but I did my best."   Bolivian troops shot and killed a miner in protests on Thursday as lawmakers suspended the first session. Police firing tear gas battled peasants and miners who set off sticks of dynamite and set fire to tires in the streets to protest the miners death and demand Vaca Diez step aside. Bolivia's military commanders had earlier called for calm and said they would support Congress, if its decision upholds the law. "We will respect the Congress' decision ... as long as there is no break with the constitution and no break with democracy, the armed forces will remain the supervisors of this process," Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Adm. Luis Aranda said.   CALL FOR NATIONALIZATION   The naming of Rodriguez as president was a key demand for protesters in the city of El Alto, a sprawling poor area in the mountains above La Paz, who had vowed to maintain their blockades of the capital unless Vaca Diez renounced the presidency.   Evo Morales, a former coca grower and indigenous leader, warned that his MAS party would not allow Vaca Diez to assume power and called for civil disobedience to pressure for elections. But Morales and other indigenous leaders say nationalization is a key issue they will not negotiate. It was unclear how Rodriguez would deal with those demands.   Peasant protesters have blocked access to several natural gas fields operated by foreign companies in eastern Santa Cruz province and forced them to halt production.   Spanish energy group Repsol YPF said protests had forced it to reduce output by an amount equal to 0.3 percent of its global production and Brazil's Petrobras warned civil unrest could hurt its natural gas supplies.   Bolivia's deepening crisis prompted U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to dispatch a senior official to the country at the request of the government.   Indian groups say Bolivia's energy riches have benefited only the white, European-descended elite. They want an assembly on constitutional reform to give them more representation. But in wealthy Santa Cruz, business leaders fed up with what they see as pandering to radical indigenous groups are demanding more autonomy from La Paz.   Weeks of often violent protests and roadblocks in La Paz have left gas stations dry and meat and bread increasingly scarce. Several airlines have suspended flights and the United States ordered nonemergency personnel to leave its embassy.   © 2005, Reuters Ltd   June 9, 2005   "For Bolivia, Neoliberalism is not an Option", by Gretchen Gordon. (CommonDreams.org)   As the Organization of American States completes its three-day session debating the role of free trade and neoliberalism in fostering democracy for the continent, the country of Bolivia is on the brink of a civil war over that very question.   The sound of firecrackers and dynamite blasts punctuated the beginning of the fourth week of paralyzing protests in the Bolivian capital of La Paz, Wednesday. Tens of thousands of indigenous, miners, workers, students, and others once again flooded the streets to vocalize two immediate demands: a new constitution, and the nationalization of Bolivia's oil and gas resources.   We want our oil and gas nationalized, so that our children can have them one day, said Japth Mamani Yanolico, an indigenous leader from the Omasuyos Province near Lake Titicaca, as he stopped to take a break from the tear gas in the streets of La Paz. And we want a Constituent Assembly.   Meanwhile, in Broward, Florida, George Bush addressed the General Session of the OAS Monday, advocating increasing free trade and neoliberal policies for Latin America through trade accords which would open markets and increase privatization in the region. Bush spoke of the benefits of free trade in buttressing fragile democracies and increasing living standards.   "In the new Americas of the 21st century, one of the surest ways to make opportunity real for all our citizens is by opening our doors to trade," said Bush.   Bush's proposals, however, received a cold welcome from the majority of representatives of Latin American countries where, after two decades of neoliberal reforms, one in four people live in poverty.   Bolivia, as many countries in the region, has been following International Monetary Fund (IMF) neoliberal mandates for the last 20 years, primary among these, the privatization of natural gas exploitation which occurred in the mid 1990s.   The current upheaval in Bolivia centers around the question of who controls, and who benefits from Bolivia's natural resources, one of the only economic lifelines of what is the poorest country in South America. The overwhelming majority of Bolivia's 9 million inhabitants are indigenous, and almost two-thirds struggle to survive far below the poverty line. For this majority, the analysis of the impacts of neoliberal policies is clear.   Neoliberal policies together with privatization are a very important part of the current crisis because they've resulted in poverty, unemployment, underemployment, and discrimination, said Sacha Llorenti, President of the Permanent Assembly on Human Rights, Bolivia's preeminent human rights organization. Bolivians are in a much more vulnerable state than they were ten years ago; we're in a vulnerable state because of the application of neoliberal policies.   While earlier this month, Congress made some moves to increase the taxes and royalties paid by corporations extracting Bolivia's natural gas, the escalation of demonstrations has signaled that for those in the streets, nothing short of full nationalization is acceptable.   President Carlos Mesa, who resigned from office late Monday night, was a free trade proponent himself, who came to power in October 2003 when previous president Gonzalo Sanchez Lozada was overthrown by public outcry over plans to use Chilean ports on the Pacific coast to allow private exportation of Bolivia's gas   The popular contender for the next presidential election is Evo Morales, leader of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and a vocal opponent of US-backed neoliberal reforms. If Morales comes to power, Bolivia would become the seventh Latin American country to move to a leftist government, opposed to U.S. neoliberal policies, in recent years..
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