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Today's Stories January 8, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts No Jobs for the New Economy (or the Old) January 7, 2008 Chris Floyd There Will Be Blood: But No Justice for Iraq Atrocities John Blair Remove That Man! Creeping Fascism in Indiana Uri Avnery The Case of the White Bird Andy Worthington Who Are the Gitmo Saudis? Binoy Kampmark Needling the Convict: Lethal Injection and the Supreme Court David Macaray Women on Strike Ralph Nader Obamarama: the Politics of the Smooth Mood Michael Donnelly It's the War Vote(s), Stupid! Ron Jacobs Ron Paul's Run: Is Being Against the War Enough? Gideon Levy The Hostile President Dave Lindorff A Real 9/11 Cover-Up? Sibel Edmonds, Turkey and the Bomb Website of the Day Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea   January 5 / 6, 2008 Douglas Valentine Good Guys in Black Hoods Kevin Young The US Occupation and Popular Opinion in Iraq Richard Rhames Saddam Who? Saul Landau Bush Snatches Defeat from Victory Marc Lynch Why Bush's Iran Strategy is Failing Robert Fantina Iowa, Democrats and the Iraq War Donna Volatile Antiwar Soldier: an Interview with Jonathan Hutto, Sr. Jelle Bruinsma Norman Finkelstein in The Netherlands Bob Sutcliffe Remembering Andrew Glyn, Rebel Economist Harvey Wasserman Anti-Nuclear Renaissance Missy Beattie Why Obama Can't Save Us David Swanson Remembering the Separation of Powers Jacob Hornberger The Importance of the Padilla Case Shepherd Bliss Survival Tools from Kokopelli Farms Ron Jacobs Bleeding Kansas Poets' Basement Patti Smith, B.R. Gowani and Peter Buknatski Website of the Weekend Jimmy Dean Sausage Call Complaint   January 4, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair A Good Night in Iowa Jonathan Cook War Crimes Airbrushed from History Paul Craig Roberts Thinking for Yourself is Now a Crime Stan Goff Ron Paul's Monkeywrench Dave Lindorff Clinton's Iowa Flop Exposes DLC Myths as Frauds Niranjan Ramakrishnan To Pindi Station Allan Nairn U.S. Elections Over Before They Began Joshua Frank The Failures of Sectarianism Peter Morici Economy on the Skids Mary McInnis Iowa Cocky-Us: How to be a Caucus Tease Website of the Day The Return of Obama Girl   January 3, 2008 Fatima Bhutto Farewell to Wadi Bua Pam Martens The Free Market Myth Dissolves into Chaos Joanne Mariner The Presidential Candidates and Torture Zoltan Grossman Remember the '80s: Social Movements Between Woodstock and the Web David Domke The Echoing Press and Huckabee Norman Solomon Edwards Reconsidered Nikolas Kozloff Return of the Faux Liberal Jacob G. Hornberger The Padilla Case and the Future of Habeas Corpus Martha Rosenberg Quit Picking on Huckabee's Son, Michael Vick Russell Means This Property is Condemned: a Notice to Those Occupying Lakotah Lands Website of the Day WolfQuest   January 2, 2008 Jeff Taylor The Left and Ron Paul M. Shahid Alam The Life and Death of Benazir Bhutto: a Pakistani Tragedy Gary Leupp Madness Compounding Madness: Calls for Intervention in Pakistan Paul Craig Roberts Criminals with Badges Heather Gray Georgia's Racist Death Penalty Fred Gardner and Shobhit Arora Dr. Strangelove's Nemesis David Macaray Labor Unions and Taft-Hartley Benjamin Dangl Fear and Loathing in Bolivia     January 1, 2008 Iain A. Boal City of Disappearances B. R. Gowani Benazir's Death in Crisistan Shahid Mahmood Bhutto and the Press Linn Washington, Jr. Old Injustices Endure: From Crack Sentences to Racial Profiling Harvey Wasserman Taking Leonard Peltier to Iowa: the Moral Low Point of the Clinton Era John Ross 2008, Already a Year to Forget Website of the Day The Thrill is Gone: BB and Gladys   December 31, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Goodbye 2007 and Good Riddance! Tariq Ali Pakistan, the Aftermath Liaquat Ali Khan The Perfidy of Pakistan's Rulers Wajahat Ali After Bhutto, a Nuclear Pakistan? Robert Fisk Who Killed Bhutto? Ajai Sahni Myths and Realities About Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan's Dark Future Marwan Bishara You Say Talk, I Say Attack: The Middle East and the US Presidential Election Campaigns Uri Avnery The Beilin Syndrome Mark T. Harris Does This Happen in Canada? Brenda Norrell Resistance and Censorship Website of the Day A People United Will Never Be Defeated   December 29 / 30, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Options in America: Kill Yourself or Have a Baby Tariq Ali Indignation and Fear Stalk Pakistan Fawzia Afzal-Khan My Encounter with Benazir Bhutto Gary Leupp The U.S. and Pakistan After 9/11: Blowback from an Unholy Alliance China Hand Pakistan Stares Into the Abyss Jacob Hornberger Stop Medddling in Pakistan John Chuckman Pakistan and the Failure of Quick-Fix Politics Missy Beattie Evaluating Bush with the Bhutto Corruption Standard Ralph Nader Who Will Take the Next Step? Fidel Castro There Hasn't Been a Day in My Life When I Haven't Learned Something Robert Fantina The Sham of Homeland Security Greg Moses Beauty from the Heart of Texas Catherine Lutz What We Can Not See: Art and Bombing Kristin Van Tassel Seeing in the Dark Kim Nicolini Redacted: Brian DePalma's Scream of Outrage Phyllis Pollack Keith Richards Runs With Rudolph Once More Poets' Basement Landau, Gibbons and Davies Website of the Weekend Driving Karachi in Search of the Perfect Naan   December 28, 2007 Farzana Versey The Complex Electra Wajahat Ali A Pakistani Requiem Binoy Kampmark Death in Rawalpindi: Bhutto and Her Legacy Ayesha Ijaz Khan Not Dead Yet: The Pakistan People's Party Still Survives Anthony DiMaggio Turkey's Bombing of Iraq Ray McGovern Creeping Fascism Jim Goodman Biofuels, the Biggest Scam Going Ron Jacobs Transcending the Colonizer's History: Iran, a People Interrupted Russell Hoffman Mini-Nukes by Toshiba John Murphy Greens Gone Wild Website of the Day Guiliani Campaign Official: "Only Rudy Can Defeat the Muslims"   December 27, 2007 Dilip Hiro A Tragedy Foretold: Will Bhutto's Death be a Boost for Her Party? Murtaza Shibli Who Killed Bhutto? Stephen Soldz Fallujah, the Information War and U.S. Propaganda Bill Quigley Locked Outside the Gates Paul Craig Roberts The Great American Lock-Up Omer Subhani Killing Bhutto: What Happens Next in Pakistan? Marjorie Cohn The Torture Tape Cover-Up: How High Does It Go? Allan Nairn Cataclysm By Money Whim Jacob G. Hornberger Smearing Ron Paul: Shame on the NYT Norman Solomon Channeling Suze Orman Patrick Irelan Rumsfeld Spills the Ink Ben Tripp Pass the Razor Blades Website of the Day Quagmire, For What It's Worth   December 26, 2007 Charles Tripp From One Saddam to Fifty Paul Armentano No-Knock, You're Dead Rannie Amiri Lebanon in Search of a Government Stanley Heller Brzezinski and Charlie Wilson's War John Walsh Two Unreasonable Men Martha Rosenberg The Strange Career of Scott Gottlieb Norman Madarasz Bolivia Amends New Constitution and Faces Mutiny from Within Website of the Day Cockburn at the Battle of Ideas   December 25, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Conscience and Empire December 24, 2007 Andrea Peacock A Dark Ride on the Border Tariq Ali Thinking of Edward Said Uri Avnery Help! A Ceasefire! Jill Jameson Burma is Not Back to Normal: A Trip from Rangoon to Mae Sot Steve Melendez Russell Means Goes to Washington Mike Whitney The Big Fix Chuck Munson Not Getting It About New Orleans John Walsh Clueless Crusaders Farzana Versey Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion Richard Neville Dreaming of a White House Christmas Website of the Day Back in the USSR December 22 / 23, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Mike Huckabee's Ascending Chariot Ralph Nader Politics and Profits: How the Oil Cartel Gets Its Way Andy Worthington Intelligence Failures, Battlefield Myths and Unaccountable Prisons in Afghanistan Ahmad Faruqui The Comedian of Pakistan Bill Moyers Society on Steroids Rev. William E. Alberts Blessed are the Peacemakers Timothy J. Freeman From Kant to Lennon: Can War Really be Over? Anthony DiMaggio Democrats Continue to Capitulate on Iraq Fred Gardner Molecule of the Year, Cannabiodiol Paul Krassner Enhanced Hazing Techniques Seth Sandronsky 17 Years of Meanness: Repealing California's Three Strikes Law William Loren Katz Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters: Recalling the Battle of Lake Okeechobee Michael Dickinson In the Dungeon of the Zabita Ron Jacobs Why Leon Russell Still Matters David Vest Doyle Bramhall's "Is It News?" Poets' Basement Orloski, Davies and Ford Website of the Weekend George W. Hates Santa   December 21, 2007 John Ross New Massacres Loom in Mexico Jacob Hornberger Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq Dick J. Reavis A Way Out of the Newspaper Abyss Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon The 2007 P.U.-litzer Prizes Peter Morici Business as Usual as Recession Looms Jack McCarthy Let Us Now Praise Judith Regan (Even If She Did Sleep with Bernie Kerik) Raúl Zibechi Sex and Revolution Steve Early How the Presidential Candidates Made Me an Atheist David Macaray Union Aftermath Patrick Bond Zuma, the Center-Left and the Left-Left in S. Africa Lakota Freedom Delegation A Declaration of Independence from the USA Website of the Day Solomon v. Beck: Tale of the Tape   December 20, 2007 David Rosen Mitt Romney's Secret Life as a Pornographer Alan Farago The Huckster and the Wreckage: Jeb Bush and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis Laura Carlsen Standing Up to NAFTA Ashley Dawson The Return of the Bread Riot Wayne Smith and Jennifer Schuett Cuba Changes, US Policy Stagnates Website of the Day How to Talk to a FoxNews Reporter   December 19, 2007 Saul Landau Is the NIE Bush's Watergate? Paul W. Lovinger Hillary the Hawk Norman Solomon The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck Dave Zirin George Mitchell's Drugs of Choice Marjorie Cohn Bush Still Spinning Iranian Nukes Sen. Russell Feingold The Iraq War is Exhausting Our Nation Sonja Karkar A Christmas Reflection on Palestine Anthony Papa Open the Drug Gulags Christopher Ketcham Pave the Holy Lands with Good Intentions Davey D Britney's Little Sister is Pregnant: Should We Blame Hip Hop? Website of the Day When Republicans Use the F-Word on TV   December 18, 2007 R. F. Blader The Politics of Teen Pregnancy George Wuerthner Gunning for Wolves in Idaho Steven Higgs Can the NAFTA Superhighway be Stopped? Vijay Prashad Encounters with Ghadar David Macaray The Free Rider Problem Ralph Nader Nine Books That Make a Difference: a Reading List for the Holidays Eva Liddell Privatizing War Abroad, Invading Privacy at Home Martha Rosenberg While the Bodies are Still Warm: Drugs, Shrinks and Shooters Dave Lindorff When Impeachment is Out of Print Peter Morici The Consequences the Trade Deficit Website of the Day Ron Paul: How Fascism Will Come to America   December 17, 2007 Mike Whitney Staring Into the Abyss Tom Barry Planning the War on Immigrants Uri Avnery A Gaza Masada? Greg Moses Crossing the Line in Texas Allan Nairn Terrorism; Counter- Terrorism: Excuses for Murder Patrick Bond South Africa's Fight Between Hostile Brothers Stephen Lendman Police State America Charles Jonkel Grizzly Right of Way Laray Polk An Inside-Out Crisis in Gaza Stephen Fleischman Pawns in Their Game December 15 / 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh A People's Penny for the Magna Carta Howard Zinn Bomb After Bomb Standard Schaefer The Greening of Big Tobacco Raymond J. Lawrence Let's Take Christ Out of Christmas Alan Farago Down on Desolation Row: the Vultures and the Growth Machine Saul Landau Lord Byron and the Bad Tourists Jenna Orkin Lying to "Reassure" the Public: Bush's EPA and the Post-9/11 Toxic Air Cover-Up Ahmad Samih Khalidi Why a Palestinian "State" is a Punitive Construct Robert Fantina Politics By Photo-Op Missy Comley Beattie Resistance Amid the Ruins Ramzy Baroud Of Mormons and Muslims James L. Secor A Vision for China's Future Elijah Wald Ike Turner's Music Won't be Forgotten Website of the Weekend The Alliance for the Wild Rockies Needs (and Deserves) Your Support   December 14, 2007 JoAnn Wypijewski The Dirty Cad: What Giuliani's Sex Life Tells Us About Him John Ross Iraqi Refugees Return: One Cruel Hoax Jacob Hornberger Terror Suspects Belong in Federal Court Andy Worthington Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened? Allan Nairn "Shoot Them on the Spot": Rewarding War Crimes Dave Zirin The Mitchell Report: Absolving the Owners Dave Lindorff The First Cut is the Deepest Misty MacDuffee Toxic Grizzlies Ben Terrall What Happened to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine? Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi Prerequisites for Peace Website of the Day Sen. Kit Bond: "Waterboarding is Like Swimming"   December 13, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Shrinking the Dollar from the Inside-Out Mike Whitney Dershowitz for the Defense--of Waterboarding Ron Jacobs Blank Check DemocratsL the Great War Funding Conspiracy Norman Solomon The USA's Human Rights Daze Peter Morici The Dragon and the Toothless Dog: China Doesn't Flinch Sandy Mayes Blocking the Strykers: 13 Days of War Resistance at Port Olympia Franklin Lamb The UN in Lebanon: Whose Mission Is It Fulfilling? Jacob Hornberger Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It Nadim Rouhana An Interloper in My Own Land Dave Zirin On Pigskin and Petrol Website of the Day Rachel's Needs (and Deserves) Your Support! December 12, 2007 Allan Nairn US Intelligence is Tapping Indonesian Phones Alan Farago How Sprawl Eats Its Young Ray McGovern Torture, Lies and Videotape Winslow T. Wheeler The Phony Pentagon Budget Cuts Evan Jones The Raid on Great Western: Why an Australian Bank Might Spell Doom for the US Farm Belt James Petras An Open Letter to Sarkozy on the Exchange of Political Prisonsers Joel Hirschorn The Horserace Fiction: Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Machine Joshua Frank Why Ron Paul Deserves Our Attention Sherry Wolf Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul Dan Bacher Survey of a Fish Graveyard Website of the Day Men Eating Bugs                 Subscribe Online

January 8, 2008 Lessons for the Rest of the World Why Bolivia Matters By LAURA CARLSEN Bolivia's National Palace is a classic colonial building that sits on the pigeon-filled Plaza Murillo in downtown La Paz. It's more often called the "Palacio Quemado" or "Burned Palace" because it's been set on fire repeatedly by dissidents of one stripe or another over the centuries since Bolivia gained its fragile independence. Today, painted a cheery yellow, it stands as a reminder of a conflictive past and a fresh future. During the colonial period the Spanish exploited the country's mineral wealth without mercy, leading to the death of hundreds of thousands of indigenous mineworkers and uprisings that punctuated the nation's history with blood and legends. Between forced labor, the war of independence, and European diseases, the new nation began its life as a republic rich in natural resources but with a decimated populace. In the words of an historian in 1831, Bolivia was like "a beggar seated on a throne of gold." In many ways, the nation's predicament changed little over the two centuries of republican life. The indigenous population, if no longer enslaved, confronted permanent inequality in political institutions and economic opportunities. The constant flow of resource wealth to a criollo elite-allied with foreign interests-cut deep channels into Bolivian society. Those flows changed form but scarcely diminished with the advent of globalization. The government of President Evo Morales came to power in January 2006 with bold plans to change all this. Its main promise to its indigenous and impoverished base of support was to reform the constitution to assure the indigenous majority the full exercise of its citizenship, and to redistribute national wealth in favor of the poor. Despite winning an absolute majority in the 2005 presidential elections, the Morales administration has had considerable difficulty leveraging its political capital into an efficient reform process. Constitutional Revision For the fledgling government of President Evo Morales, a new constitution is the cornerstone of lasting change. The goal is to create a new legal structure for Bolivian society that for the first time in the nation's history respects and legally recognizes diversity in a "plurinational" country. The Constituent Assembly arose as a demand by social movements in the 1990s and more specifically in the Water War of Cochabamba in 2000-2001. In recent years neoliberal governments made legal and constitutional changes to grant private investors near carte-blanche access to natural resources and basic services, exposing the poor nation to one of the most unequal and exploitive forms of globalization found in the hemisphere. These legal changes became the hallmark of their governments and the source of their downfall. For instance, in 2003 President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada fled to the United States after his government fired into a crowd of protestors, killing dozens. He and former defense minister Sanchez Berzain currently face extradition demands and a lawsuit from the Center for Constitutional Rights for damages related to the murder of 67 women, men, and children in the September and October protests, nearly all from indigenous Aymara communities. After taking office the Morales government moved rapidly to institute the Constituent Assembly. The unprecedented process required establishing new institutions and rules that have generated ambiguity at times and conflict throughout. Acrimonious negotiations, dualing mobilizations in the streets, and overheated media warnings of ungovernability held the nation in near permanent chaos from July of 2006 to the mandated deadline of Dec. 14, 2007. Much of that time the assembly was suspended. The government has been criticized frequently by both the left and the right for errors of judgment and procedure, but it has attempted to keep dialogue open. The conservative opposition has taken a confrontational stance toward the Constituent Assembly-presided over by Quechua and women's rights leader Silvia Lazarte -from the outset. The loosely coordinated opposition has zig-zagged between calls for greater adherence to the law and illegal acts of sabotage, including violence from civic committees and local neo-fascist groups. Finally, some but not all of the rightwing conservative parties launched a boycott of the institutional process. The Assembly faced one obstacle after another. Debates over representation, regional autonomy, landholdings, and an old issue of where the nation's capital should be physically located (Sucre or La Paz) tested the limits of a country facing entrenched interests and the uncertainties of moving from a historically unjust system to a new system yet to be defined. Toward Referendum Finally on December 9 the assembly approved the constitutional text with the required two-thirds vote, but with a boycott of the major political conservative party PODEMOS. The text now goes to a national referendum, but only after a separate referendum on the crucial issue of land reform. In a recent interview with the CIP Americas Policy Program, Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera stated that the conflicts have their roots in Bolivia's history and reflect a fundamentally healthy, if difficult, stage of democratic redefinition. Following the boycotted assembly, four of the nine departmental governments declared autonomy, with some leaders going so far as to threaten secession. They have begun gathering signatures to call a referendum on a far more radical form of autonomy that would grant local governments broad control over resources found in their territories and erode central government authority and national cohesion. Since these departments concentrate much of the nation's oil and gas and agricultural production, the move is a serious challenge to the Morales government, which has responded by declaring it divisive and illegal. The text of the proposed constitution begins by declaring that Bolivia is "a unitary, plurinational, communitarian, free, independent, sovereign, democratic, social decentralized state, with territorial autonomies" that is founded on "plurality and political, economic, judicial, cultural, and linguistic pluralism." The sheer quantity of adjectives reveals the complexity of the political project underfoot. The declaration of principles reflects the recent history of Bolivia's grassroots struggles for political representation for the indigenous majority and similar efforts in other Latin American nations with sizable indigenous populations. It also addresses the age-old issue of the balance of power between federal, state, and local government by recognizing four types of autonomy: departmental, regional, municipal, and indigenous. The practical overlap here will be a challenge. A detailed analysis of the 411 proposed articles now becomes the task at hand of Bolivian society as the constitution goes up for a popular referendum. But the other key element worth mentioning is the constitution's overall concept of building a state that controls and regulates natural-resource use for the public good. This is a political sea change from the era when it was assumed that what was best for the private sector was best for the nation. Why Bolivia Matters To outsiders, Bolivia's upheaval may seem like merely the latest in a seemingly endless series of conflicts in a tiny nation known for political instability. The corporate-controlled media in the United States have carefully crafted an image of a relatively ignorant and violent populace running rampant over hopelessly weak institutions. These distorted images persist even though the deep changes proposed by the government have been conducted largely through legal channels and it has been the conservative opposition that has sought to undermine those processes. The indigenous character of Evo Morales's leadership and popular support plays like a subtle but palpably racist sub-theme in the international press, with the Wall Street Journal taking the lead in Evo-bashing. An Indian president, Morales is persistently portrayed as a pawn of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and his deep ties to traditional coca growers are recast as nefarious drug lord activities. Numerous press reports portray indigenous organizations as mindless mobs intent on dismantling the remains of Bolivia's dubious democratic institutions. The viciousness of these attacks on the Morales government best reveal the potential global impact of what it's trying to do. Bolivia matters, to everyone seeking more just and stable societies, for two reasons that Vice President Garcia Linera describes as the "two conquests of equality"-political justice and economic justice. The government's attempt to establish conditions for the full exercise of citizenship for indigenous peoples goes beyond equal access to limited forms of representative democracy. Recognizing the rights for the 36 peoples mentioned in the new constitution implies devising concrete mechanisms to harmonize communitarian and liberal forms of justice and government that have very different logics. Every nation in the Western Hemisphere where indigenous peoples have survived the genocidal campaigns of the past five centuries faces this challenge. The second challenge, the effort to harness the sustainable use of natural resources for the public good, tests the limits to change imposed by the global neoliberal system. Can a country climb from poverty to equitable development through constitutional reform? The answer will depend in large part on the dynamics of Bolivian politics and the ability of the political leadership. But it will also depend on the extent of external limitations. In assessing those limitations, Mexican political analyst Adolfo Gilly points out "the inelastic limits that those who govern run into, whether it be the ferocious resistance of the classes that have been displaced from power, and their political and economic representatives, foreign as well as domestic; or the steel cage in which the new global neoliberal order encloses possibilities of action, along with the imminent presence of its powerful material base-the Pentagon, the military force of the United States; or the material limits of scarcity, national isolation, and poverty." The Morales administration has so far sought to break the ties that bind in various ways. It announced withdrawal from the U.S.-run School of the Americas-now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) but still often referred to by the less cumbersome name it carried prior to a 2001 revamping. SOA/WHINSEC is a military training facility in Georgia that has produced a long line of dictators and torturers throughout the hemisphere. With respect to the global economy, the Bolivian government decided to withdraw from the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes of the World Bank, a trade arbitration system characterized by its supranational powers, lack of transparency, and bias toward investors. Bolivia has sought renegotiation of its Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Mexico as well as opposing an FTA with the United States, while signing a People's Trade Agreement with Venezuela and Cuba. In March of 2006 the government stated it would not seek to renew its standby agreement with the IMF, which was responsible for imposing neoliberal policies that hurt the national economy and its most vulnerable sectors. International Response The response of the Bush administration to the Morales government has been hostile but guarded. U.S. Agency for International Development has moved to directly fund projects in opposition regions to strengthen resistance to the policies of Morales' party, the Movement for Socialism (MAS), as part of its "democracy-building" program. The U.S. ambassador in Bolivia, Phillip Goldberg has had frequent run-ins with the Bolivian government over accusations of politically targeted aid. The ambassador recently stated that the relationship between the two countries was "complicated" and emphasized that cooperation would be focused on reducing coca cultivation. This formulation is ominous given the wide differences between the Morales government's policy of promoting traditional coca growing while cracking down on cocaine production, and the U.S. drug war model centered on militarization and fumigation programs. On the other hand, several Latin American nations have stepped up to support Bolivia following the termination of the Constituent Assembly. Brazil's President Lula made a state visit and announced a $1 billion investment by the country's state-owned petroleum company in oil and gas. The announcement was particularly significant since Brazil's semi-public gas giant Petrobras initially protested the Morales government's nationalization of control of its operations in the country and suspended further investment. Chilean president Michelle Bachelet also gave explicit support to the beleaguered government by promising to finish the Inter-Oceanic highway system. Perhaps the most important determining factor in the success of the Morales program will be its relationship with progressive social movements of indigenous peoples, workers, miners, women, and others that created the revolutionary conditions that brought the MAS to power. Not only is this the government's base of support, but it is the true source of national sovereignty and impetus for democratic change. Although the Evo Morales administration defines itself as "a government of social movements," historians Forrest Hylton and Sinclair Thompson rightly point out that the relationship is far from simple and that it will be crucial that the independence and political space of those movements not be subsumed in the logic of the state. Bolivia today is an open laboratory. It might seem an unlikely stage for such an ambitious experiment: a landlocked nation of scarcely nine million with strong vestiges of colonial rule and the continent's highest poverty rate. Yet the effort to use the state to retake and redistribute resources ceded to private economic interests under globalization, to enfranchise indigenous populations, to narrow the appalling gap between the haves and have-nots of our era deserves a chance and will no doubt provide lessons for the rest of the world. Laura Carlsen is director of the Americas Policy Program at the Center for International Policy in Mexico City, where she has been a writer and political analyst for two decades.   Your Ad Here

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