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	Bolivia, The Poor Little Rich Country by William Powers International Herald Tribune, The Nation Bolivia   June 2005   For three weeks, Bolivia has been paralyzed by blockades and protests, an uprising that forced the president, Carlos Mesa, to resign last week. The protesters, primarily indigenous Indians, want to nationalize Bolivia''s vast natural gas reserves, South America''s second largest; BP has quintupled its estimate of Bolivia''s proven reserves to 29 trillion cubic feet, worth a whopping $250 billion. The Indians are in a showdown with the International Monetary Fund and companies like British Gas, Repsol of Spain and Brazil''s Petrobras that have already invested billions of dollars in exploration and extraction.Many are calling developments of the past several years in Bolivia a war against globalization, but in fact this is more of a struggle over who has power here. An American Indian majority is standing up to the light-skinned, European elite and its corruption-fueled relations with the world.   When the Spanish Empire closed shop here in 1825, the Europeans who stayed on didn''t seem to notice - and still don''t. Even within Latin America, Bolivia is known for its corruption. It''s also divided along a razor-sharp racial edge. Highland and Amazon peoples compose almost two-thirds of the population. And while Indians are no longer forcibly sprayed with DDT for bugs and are today allowed into town squares, Bolivian apartheid - a "pigmentocracy of power" - continues.   I''ve been here for three years as an aid official, and exclusion is part of life. Indians are barred from swimming pools at some clubs, for example; they are still "peones" on eastern haciendas little touched by land reform. Meanwhile, Bolivia''s energy-rich eastern states are agitating for "autonomy" in a thinly disguised effort to deprive the poor Indian west of oil and gas revenues.   What is to be done to prevent a collapse in Bolivia? The answer, of course, must begin with Bolivians themselves. Elites here must recognize that the country''s dark-skinned social movements are stronger than any political party or president and will not go away. Any lasting solution must shift real power to Bolivia''s poor majority.   We''ll see a lot of political maneuvering in the coming days. Some of the roadblocks were dismantled in the wake of Mesa''s ouster and the installation of a new interim president, Eduardo Rodríguez, the former head of the Supreme Court. But sustained stability depends on movement toward more equality, not just cosmetic changes, starting with speedy national elections and a constituent assembly with the full power to rewrite the Constitution and decide who benefits from Bolivia''s petroleum.   Solving the crisis, however, depends not just on ending exclusion, but also on how the rest of the world relates to Bolivia, South America''s poorest country, particularly through economic policy. In Bolivia, we must also accept that democracy means, well, letting people decide what to do with their own resources. Existing contracts with foreign oil companies were signed by corrupt Bolivian leaders, without the approval of Congress. Even if nationalizing petroleum may be a growth-zapping bad idea, we need to let Bolivians themselves decide.   Moreover, our own ideas for this region are not always so fabulous. Bolivia was the testing ground for the IMF''s "shock therapy" liberalization in 1985. This stringent recipe has made millions for oilmen and industrial soy farmers here (neither sector creates much employment) but has not reduced inequality; 20 years later, Bolivia''s income levels are stagnant or worse, and half the population lives on less than $2 a day.   Besides taking a respectful hands off, the world should contribute one vital thing toward a more democratic society that embraces Indians: debt relief to the reforming government. Bolivia''s debt load has risen to 82 percent of gross domestic product, sucking up a mind-boggling 40 percent of fiscal expenditures. This is a recipe for more poverty and turmoil.   Meanwhile, the Indians, distrusting Rodríguez''s promise to call elections and talk to proponents of nationalization, are keeping some of the roadblocks in place and may reopen others, a tactic that costs millions of dollars in lost commerce, hurting the Indians themselves most of all. But as one Quechua Indian told me as he crossed his arms in front of my taxi here in Samaipata, vaguely evoking Tiananmen Square: "Our cultures have been blocked for 500 years. This is our only voice."   * William Powers is the author of the book on Bolivia, A Natural Nation.   June 2005   Bolivia''s Battle of Wills, by Christian Parenti. (The Nation)   At a roadblock on the Bolivian altiplano, a group of indigenous tin miners in brown fiberglass helmets, their jaws bulging with coca leaves, lounge around on an empty strip of road. Suddenly the thin, high-altitude air shakes with a quick explosion. Everyone laughs. The comrades are killing time by tossing lit dynamite into a field. Tomorrow they will march across these high empty plains, through the sprawling, impoverished, majority Indian city of El Alto and over the edge of a steep canyon down into the capital of La Paz, and there lay siege to the government.   The miners have held this road for the past twenty-four hours. Both main arteries linking La Paz to the outside world are shut down. The Bolivian economy is beginning to sputter and stall; before long the restaurants, hotels and offices of the capital will start to run out of food and fuel; uncollected garbage will pile up in the streets. Soon six major cities will be sealed off by more than eighty blockades.   "The Congress is dominated by the transnational corporations. We are fighting to recover our natural resources. It is our right," says a stern miner named Miguel Sureta.   The social movements--a host of mostly indigenous organizations representing Aymara and Quechua peasants, miners, teachers, urban community organizations, coca growers and the oldest national labor federation--are demanding nationalization of the country''s massive natural gas reserves, now estimated to be the second-largest in the hemisphere, at 53 trillion cubic feet. Their other plank is a constituent assembly to reformulate Bolivia''s political system and give greater power to the majority indigenous population.   Throughout South America, center-left governments are taking power, with Uruguay and Ecuador being the latest to join the trend. Bolivia, home to some of the most well-organized and radical popular movements on the continent, could be next. But the challenges facing the Bolivian left are enormous: Despite all its strength, it is riven by ideological disputes, pervasive Quechua versus Aymara ethnic factionalism and the constant clash of leadership egos.   Meanwhile, the right is also mobilizing. European-descended elites in the gas-rich lowland provinces of Santa Cruz and Tarija are agitating for autonomy or possible secession. The major oil companies operating in Bolivia are all threatening disinvestment if the industry is restructured. There are also rumors of a possible military coup.   On June 6 the centrist president, Carlos Mesa Gisbert, resigned. For a tense week it seemed the next president would be Hormando Vaca Díez, president of the Senate, a right-wing cattle rancher who warned that continued protest would "end in authoritarian government." But now Eduardo Rodriguez, head of the Supreme Court, has been sworn in as Bolivia''s president. He is obliged to hold elections within six months..   * Visit the link below to access the complete article. Visit the related web page
	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
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