|
Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $11.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
January
22, 2004
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's Revelations
and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the Mafia
January
21, 2004
Mazin
Qumsiyeh
Spring in Palestine
Ron
Jacobs
Drive, He Said
Dave Lindorff
Iraq Election Blowback
January 20, 2004
Stan
Goff
State of the Union, MLK and 30 mm DU: Another
Embittered Rant by a Former Soldier
Dave Louthan
Inside the Mad Cow Plant: a Worker Speaks
Out
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Havoc in the Cornfields
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti--Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A
Visit to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil--Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How
2004 Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No
Stan for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's Non--existent
WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo--Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A
Record to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the Cuban
Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red
Alert 2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti--Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The
Washington Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
|
January
22, 2003
Corruption and Bloodshed in Bolivia
The
Prisoner, the President and the Mafia
By FORREST HYLTON
During
Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada’s first administration, which
emphasized the importance of foreign investment for Bolivian growth
and development, Yerko Kukoc was Prefect of Potosí, and thus
presided over the massacre, in November and December 1996, of eleven
miners and community peasants in Amayapampa and Capasirca, which was
carried out to protect the investments and pardon the environmental
abuses of Da Capo and Vista Gold, North American mining corporations.
It
was not surprising, then, that as Minister of Government during Sánchez
de Lozada’s second and much bloodier administration, Kukoc was
able to stomach the killing of eighty-one civilians in September-October
2003; anything to stay in power long enough to benefit from the export
of Bolivian liquid gas through Chile to California.
As
Minister of Government, Kukoc was a vehement advocate of the theory
of a "narcoterrrorist" conspiracy, directed by coca growers’
movement and opposition party leader, Evo Morales, and designed to topple
the government. Kukoc was perhaps the most visible Bolivian government
figure in the US-led "war on drugs and terror."
On
October 17, 2003, Kukoc was on the plane to Miami with deposed president
Sánchez de Lozada, and his hangman, former Minister of Defense
Carlos Sánchez Berzaín (the trio narrowly escaped being
lynched in public). However, Kukoc, who managed to take with him espionage
equipment, donated by the US Embassy and worth $100,000, apparently
failed to settle accounts before leaving, and returned after $300,000
in cash was found in the hardware store of a lifelong friend, Milder
Arzadúm Monzón, in Santa Cruz on December 7.
Both
the friend and the hardware store were under investigation for money
laundering (El Juguete Rabioso, 21 December 2003, 8-9). Arzadúm
Monzón, according to the DEA, did prison time in Panamá
for trafficking, and, according to Interpol, was investigated in Bogotá
in 1986 for shipping coca paste from Bolivia to Colombia, though he
is not currently under investigation for trafficking in Bolivia.
Kukoc
was to appear in court in Santa Cruz before District Attorney José
Alfredo Añez on December 10, but the head of the Santa Cruz police,
Freddy Soruco, helped make sure Kukoc never got the summons. Meanwhile,
Kukoc gave press conferences from the five-star Hotel Bungavilas, and
when he decided to make his move to La Paz, Soruco sent a police escort,
which then accompanied Kukoc back to Santa Cruz after he had declared
before General Accountant Jorge Treviño. Soruco was appointed
head of police in Santa Cruz by the Mesa administration, but ex-Minister
Kukoc dictated the appointment. Previously, Soruco had been the Administrative
Chief under Kukoc, and therefore in charge of the "secret expenses"
(los gastos reservados).
Since
part of the money found in Arzadúm’s hardware store came
from "secret expenses," it is not hard to see why Soruco would
want to protect Kukoc from the District Attorney; a cut of the spoils
was almost surely coming to him. But a series of questions present themselves:
if $141,000 came from the "secret expenses," where did the
rest of the $300,000—$80,000 of which belonged to Kukoc, and $71,000
to Arzadúm—come from? And what were public monies doing
in private hands, mixed together with funds of unknown origin? Why store
them in envelopes in a hardware store? Since District Attorney Añez
wants answers to these and other questions, Kukoc’s house in Santa
Cruz is currently surrounded by special police, waiting for Kukoc to
leave so they can arrest him.
Sánchez
de Lozada’s Minister of Government in 1997, Victor Hugo Canelas,
recently revealed that "Goni" charged the state $7,000 per
month in "supersalaries"—not subject to taxation—during
his first administration. Canelas argues, "We have to fight against
a real mafia, which Goni heads like a ‘Godfather’….
I’ve been in meetings in which Goni called in judges and DAs,
many times to pay them off" (Pulso, January 16-22, 2004, 16). According
to Canelas, as far as justice is concerned, the weakest link in Goni’s
past is not the massacres of September-October, but the unprecedented
degree of mafia-style corruption and payoffs that characterized both
of his administrations. True to form, "Goni," Bolivia’s
wealthiest mining entrepreneur, passed New Year’s Eve in his old
neighborhood, Calacoto, in La Paz, with generals and colonels and suitcases
full of cash to hand around as party favors.
Then
there’s Chonchocoro Maximum Security Prison, where the rains recently
flooded a number of cells, especially in the isolation block, and toppled
most of the outer perimeter wall to the east, leaving nothing but chain-link
(and a police sniper in a parked car) between prisoners and their freedom.
Colombian peasant and human rights leader, Francisco "Pacho"
Cortés, accused of, but not charged with, heading up the "narcoterrorist"
Bolivian National Liberation Army (ELN-B)—which has yet to make
an appearance or stage an action—was arrested on April 10, 2003,
and transferred to Chonchocoro on May 7—ostensibly because he
was plotting escape with members of the Peruvian MRTA, as well as the
two Bolivian coca growers with whom he was arrested, Claudio Ramírez
and Carmelo Peñaranda.
During
a break in the clouds, fighting the bite of a high plains wind, we talk
about Kukoc, and Pacho laughs. At the time of the operation at Ramírez’s
house on Nicolas Katari St. in El Alto, police found $4,000 (which has
since been returned to Pacho), some bullets, a grenade, adhesive tape,
wire, and, supposedly, flags and manuals. Kukoc posed as the leading
crusader against "narcoterrorism" and warned of grave dangers
to the nation, narrowly avoided thanks to the hard work of Kukoc and
District Attorney René Arzabe (whose reputation places him squarely
within the "Mafioso" mold).
Noam
Chomsky has long argued that conspiracy theories fail to explain enduring
political patterns in the relationship between state institutions and
the private sector. But since Bolivia was founded in 1825, high-level
conspiracy is one of the most regular of such patterns. The evidence
here points to conspiracy to block peasant internationalism via police
frame-up, and Kukoc fits the "narcoterrorist" profile as well
as any Bolivian leader since Luis Arce Gómez (another inveterate
conspirator).
While
police wait patiently outside Kukoc’s house, Pacho Cortés,
who’s working to set up human rights workshops in prison, continues
to face threats and harassment from prisoners subcontracted by the police,
who are pressured by the DA’s office. "Chucho," a Colombian
narcotrafficker who got his start with Pablo Escobar at age fifteen,
and who looks after Pacho in prison (according to Chucho, Pacho knows
nothing about how to defend himself against "bandits"); Chucho,
who threatened his first judge and the judge’s mother in front
of an immobilized army colonel; Chucho, who received no sanctions when
it was discovered that he had grenade launchers, machine guns, and munitions
stored in a freezer, anticipating the arrival of an artillery helicopter
from Brazil; even Chucho has been feeling heat from above lately. Could
it be because he keeps Pacho out of harm’s way?
It
appears that Kukoc may fall. If so, he will probably try to drag the
rest of the gang down with him—Kukoc is not the type to tough
it out on his own. The question then becomes: how deep will District
Attorney Añez go? Will Mesa be up to the task of bringing to
justice the men he worked with, day in and day out, through October
2003? Can the social movements that overthrew Goni and crew force the
new administration to take on such formidable criminals, whose continued
plotting presents the greatest danger to the survival of Mesa’s
new government?
Only
once Pacho Cortés is free to organize and agitate in fields,
plazas, and city streets of Bolivia, and Yerko Kukoc, Pacho’s
accuser, is safely ensconced in a cell in Chonchocoro, will Carlos Mesa
be complying with the promises he made, during his inaugural speech
on October 17, to end impunity in Bolivia. But first, Mesa will have
to confront the ‘Godfather’ and his mafia.
Forrest
Hylton can be reached at: forresthylton@hotmail.com
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax--Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links / |