Today's Stories

October 1 , 2008

Steven Conn
Trashing Sarah Palin: the Boomerang Effect

September 30, 2008

Pam Martens
What Wall Street Hoped to Win

Chris Floyd
The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic on Wall Street

Stephen Martin
A Biological Walk Down Wall Street

Deepak Tripathi
A Bitter Harvest in Afghanistan

Mark Engler
Bad Money

Jonathan Cook
The Attack on Zeev Sternhell: Has Israel Become a Breeding Ground for Jewish Settler Terrorism?

Dave Lindorff
The Power of No

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Time for a General Strike?

Ahmad Faruqui
In Cold Blood: Buried Alive in Pakistan

John Chuckman
Will the Bride Wear White? As Rome Burns, Bristol Palin Prepares to Tie the Knot with Mr. "Sex on Skates"

David Macaray
Blaming the Labor Unions

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Obama Could Have Said

Website of the Day
538: a Cognitive Map of American Politics

September 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
Black Monday

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

John Walsh
Sarah Palin is a Rotten Mom

Uri Avnery
Israeli Fascism: Yes, It Can Happen Here

Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: the Financial Collapse and the Housing Market

Andy Worthington
Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials?

David Michael Green
Where's the Repudiation?

Carl Finamore
Capitalism on Steroids; Labor on Tranquilizers

Iris Keltz
Postcards from the DNC

Bill Hatch
Take This Shrimp Slayer!

Website of the Day
Tina Fey as Palin, Round Two

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

October 1 , 2008

"This, in Bolivia, is a Revolution"

Racism, Domination and Bolivia

By ADOLFO GILLY

Mexico.

"The problem in Bolivia is that the country is undergoing a process of reforms, without abandoning the democratic framework, but both the opposition and the government act as if they were facing a revolution,” stated Marco Aurelio García, a close advisor to Lula in international affairs, according to an article by José Natanson in the newspaper Pagina 12.

Allowing myself to not take this declaration literally, but instead in an ironic sense, Marco Aurelio García, an intelligent and well-informed man, can’t help but realize that if the two protagonists of the Bolivian confrontation believe that they are dealing with a revolution, this belief is the best confirmation that, in effect, it is. The Vice President, Álvaro García Linera, on the other hand, has said that what is happening is “an increase in elites, an increase in rights, and a redistribution of wealth. This, in Bolivia, is a revolution.”

He is right: in Bolivia this alone would already be a revolution like the one in Nicaragua in 1979. But what is happening is something much deeper and that goes much further than the elites, politics, and the economy. This is a questioning of the means of the historical domination by those elites, old and new. It comes from very far below, it is moved by an ancient fury, and it will not be stopped by the massacres at the hands of fascist groups nor by the fragile government agreements with the prefects of the Media Luna.

The massacre in Pando, with more than 30 campesinos assassinated in cold blood by the hit men of the white minority, and the horrific scenes of humiliation, pain and punishment of the indigenous people in the public plaza of Sucre and in the streets of Santa Cruz de la Sierra at the hands of gangs of fascist youth, are telling in that this white minority knows exactly what game it is playing: its power is not negotiable, its lands are untouchable, its right to despotic rule resides in skin color not in the votes of citizens. The white minority is not willing to, in a sense, “extend” said despotic right, supported also by poor white groups whose only “property” is their skin color that separates them from the Indians. They are much less willing to redistribute property or wealth.

The Bolivian right-wing, the old and not-so-old elites, the owners of land and of lives, were defeated by the immense indigenous and popular uprising that began with the Water Wars in the year 2000, culminated with the rebellion of El Alto in October 2003, and concluded with Evo Morales’ entry into the presidency in January 2005. The new Constitution, even though subjected to a referendum, and other measures by the Bolivia government, have been steps to strengthen the new government in judicial, political and economic terrain.

This process was approved again by a the great majority of the Bolivian people in the referendum on August 10th; 67 percent of the votes–-more than two-thirds–- with up to 85 percent approval in the communities of the Altiplano. The dominant white minority in the eastern region has incited revolt, and, with brutality and ferociousness, challenges these national electoral results and threatens secession.

This minority knows well that it is not about simple “democratic improvements/extensions” but that instead it is about a revolution that questions the minority’s power and its privileges, the “structural inheritance” of its despotic rule. Therefore a revolution is one of those culminating moments in which the insurgent movement of the people touches those exact bases of domination, tries to destroy them, and is able to fracture the dividing line where that domination passes through the given society.

It is not about the line that separates the governors from the governed, a political question, but instead about the line that separates the dominators from the subaltern. In the classical sense, social revolution refers to the subversion of that social domination and not just to political or economic domination.

That dividing line is sharp and deep in Bolivia. It is not only a class domination, although that does exist. It is above all about a racial domination that was shaped in the colonial times and reaffirmed in the ogliarchic Republic from 1825 onwards.

In that domination, being a full citizen means being white or an assimilated mestizo. To become a citizen, an Indian must stop being Indian and see themselves and be seen as being white; break from their concrete historical community, that of the Aymaras, the Quechuas, the Guaraníes or another one of the many indigenous Bolivian communities; and enter as a newly-arrived subordinate into the abstract community of the citizens of the Republic. The Indian does not expect that the Republic will change and be like his people. Instead, it is required that these people change their men and women, renounce their identity and their history and be like the Republic of the whites, the rich, the eucated, the Spanish-speakers – where, for everyone else, the inerasable color of their skin will forever condemn them (those men and women) to second-class citizenship. That is the nature of this domination.

The strength of the revolution taking place in Bolizia is supported by an ancient civiliation, invisible in the law but one that persists in the languages, customs, belief, relationships of solidarities and communities, both rural and urban. The dominated brown-skinned people were not brought from other lands. There were there before, they were and they continue to be the native civilization. The filmmaker Jorge Sanginés, in an unforgettable film, called it “The Clandestine Nation.” Guillermo Bonfil named it “Deep Mexico: A Civilization Denied.” Following in their steps, I have named it “a subaltern civilization” in my book, “Historia a contrapelo.”

Clandestine, denied or subaltern, the social and cultural framework of those native civilizations appears at the moment of organizing the uprisings and the rebellions of their heirs and bearers, because those rebellions and uprisings are roots as deep as the root of racial domination.

That strength also lives in the inherited framework of the dominated and subaltern who spark revolt to win all of the rights that the racial Republic denies them or limits for them: dignity and respect, spaces of liberty and organization, the natural resources of their land, education, health, everything that constitutes the social framework of a Republic of equals.

The old republican motto “liberty-equality-fraternity” has in such rebellions its double: “land-justice-solidarity.” In these regions there is not liberty without land redistribution, there is not equality without justice for all, and there is not fraternity without solidarity between the multiple communities and between the entire community of this nation of nations that is Bolivia.

It is not just about a new political and economic order. It is about what in the Bolivian context will constitute a new social order. From that comes the bestial violence of the reactions of the privileged minority groups and their hit men, as in Pando, in Santa Cruz, in Chuquisaca.

All of Bolivia, and especially the indigenous and working-class Bolivia that overwhelmingly won the referendum, has seen this muderous violence exercised over its brothers and sisters on television and the radio. Those images have come back to show, better than any speech can, what they have already known and lived in their own flesh and in that of their parents and grandparents. They have been able to see live, in color, the threat of the past returning.

They will not allow it. They have enough experience and organization to know how to respond to the violence with violence if their governors, for whom they wait but of whom they also make demands, do not stop and punish the criminals, the only sensible and effective resolution that could come from the current negotiations between the fighting forces.

The expulsion of the Washington ambassador for conspiring with the racist right-wing has helped to put the right-wing in its place. But it has not stopped it. The summit of the South American presidents in Santiago, Chile, has given support to the government of Evo Morales and has taken certain hopes away from those who support a coup. But it has neither disarmed them nor tied their hands: they still have allies in those countries.

However, it is not just the governments who are playing. In Bolivia the indigenous and working-class organizations from the eastern regions, the altiplano and the valleys are mobilizing and some are literally at war. They do not seem ready to let themselves or the situation be shut away at the negotiation table between the government and the murderous prefeccts.

A report from the Gran Pueblo Chiquitano, from the Eastern region, decided on September 15th that “they had reached their limit for tolerance and they will renew the sense of survival and fury of the Pueblo Chiquitano to fight fiercely for their Land, Dignity, and Indigenous Autonomy.” Therefore, it is decided “to confirm the consequence and unshakeable struggle to defend the results of the constituent process, which has included our historical demands […] So that we will never again be slaves nor servants of the ogliarchic and land-owning groups of Santa Cruz!”; and “to warn the Civil Authorities and Prefectural Authorities from the department of Santa Cruz that the indigenous territories that are titled and those that are in the process of reorganization are untouchable, cannot be changed, and are not subject to external authority.”

A declaration by the Social Organizations of Eastern Bolivia demanded on September 17th that “the Parliament and the National Government not touch the new Political Constitution of the State approved in Oruro on December 9th, 2007, above all the chapter on autonomies, since it is there that the principal demands of more than 25 years of struggle are located and claimed. Humiliated and persecuted, we, and our fallen brothers and sisters, advocate, march, and die for our liberation and the liberation of all Bolivian People.”

A September 17th alert from the Coordinating Committee of the Indigenous Peoples of Santa Cruz says, “Those who assaulted our offices are sent by and paid for by the land speculators, big landowners and those who enslave our indigenous brothers and sisters, and by the Prefect, the Mayor, and civic committees, who oppose our historical demand placed in the New Political Constitution: the autonomous indigenous territories, without subordination to any regional authority, which has an inalienable character and is thus the basis of our liberation as a people.”

In this terrain, that of a revolution whose makers and protagonists are not ready to give it up nor negotiate it no matter what the cost and no matter what violence the land-owners and racists will execute, are the confrontations in Bolivia. Perhaps the end will not be immediate. But, as in October 2003, if they will not give up the outcome they desire, it will be resolved in the streets and in the countryside. That is one of the reasons for the alarm of the governments of the countries bordering Bolivia.

This text was published in Spanish in the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada on September 22, 2008

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