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Today's Stories December 26, 2007 Charles Tripp From One Saddam to Fifty 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   December 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn What's Really Happened During the Surge? Diana Johnstone The Next Kosovo War Paul Craig Roberts It's Waco All Over Again: Preventive Detention and the Constitution David Macaray Impasse in Hollywood Ralph Nader Gail Collins Versus the Underdogs Andy Worthington Guantánamo Britons to be Released: a Mixed Result Martha Rosenberg No Holiday for High Risk Sex Workers Steve Champion / Anthony Ross Words for Our Brother, Tookie Williams Kim Nicolini Tangled Up in Dylan Michael Dickinson Say Goodbye to Purgatory: Pope Rat Gets Indulgent Website of the Day A Charming (and Worthy) Pitch December 10, 2007 Uri Avnery How They Stole the Bomb From Us Debbie Nathan The Perils of Journalism and Child Porn JoAnn Wypijewski Is There a Left Here Left? If So, What Can It Do? Steve Kelly Cheap Chips, Counterfeit Wilderness Donna J. Volatile Welcome to the Revolution   December 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Coup Against Bush and Cheney Brenda Norrell Seize the Land, Chain the Peace Activists Saul Landau The Ruins of Empire R. F. Blader A Rape in Every Drink? Ray McGovern Spinning Iran's Centrifuges Allan Nairn Imposed Hunger in Gaza, the Army in Indonesia Linn Washington, Jr Spotlight on Death Row Paul Craig Roberts When Will Bush Come Clean?   December 7, 2007 Sean Penn Piano Wire Puppeteers Arthur Versluis Mining Water in the Desert M. G. Piety Racism and the American Psyche: Some Thoughts on Race and Intelligence Pam Martens Banksters Gone Wild Alan Farago Will the Free Market Kill Suburbia? Sprawl and the Credit Crisis Allan Nairn It Takes (Out) a Village Col. Dan Smith Bush, Iran and the Politics of Doomsday Alice Slater The Iran Opening Robert Weissman The Story of Stuff Website of the Day Something About Mitt   December 5, 2007 Mike Whitney Why the CFR Hates Putin Sharon Smith The Anti-War Enablers: Tom Hayden and the Dead End Democrats James Petras Venezuela in the Aftermath Ron Jacobs The Iran Charade Dave Zirin Kicking a Dead Man: the Sliming of Sean Taylor John V. Whitbeck Two States or One? Time to Choose Peter Zinn Covered in New Orleans Niranjan Ramakrishnan Impeach Pelosi Instead Alan Farago The Credit Bomb Detonates in Florida Heather Gray US Meddling in Australian Politics Website of the Day A Donner Summit Night Before Xmas   December 4, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Jackboot State Stubs Its Toe in Ann Arbor Andy Worthington Guantánamo and the Supreme Court Paul Craig Roberts The Lies at the End of the American Dream Ray McGovern No-Nuke Iran Winslow T. Wheeler Admiral Mullen and the Defense Budget: When White Elephants are Too Small Allan Nairn The Regime Still Stands in Burma, Where "the People Just Want Food" Russell Mokhiber The USA v. Al Arian Nikolas Kozloff As Chávez Falters: Raising the Stakes for the South American Left John V. Walsh Peace Movement Paralyzed Ghada Ageel Will Peace Cost Me My Home? Stephen Soldz The Facts be Damned!: Psychologists' President Defends Psychologist Involvement in Interrogations Website of the Day Hands Off the People of Iran     December 3, 2007 Tariq Ali Venezuela After the Referendum Bill Quigley New Orleans: Bulldozers for the Poor, Tax Credits for Developers Eric Walberg The Bible and Middle East History Uri Avnery After Annapolis Marjorie Cohn Operation Iraqi Freedom Exposed Dave Lindorff Vengeance Isn't Sweet Stephen Fleischman Homeless in Paradise Martha Rosenberg Perp Walks for the Mink Clad on Chicago's Mag Mile Website of the Day So Just Lead!   December 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Emblems of the Bush Age: Adrift in a Sea of Booze Jeffrey St. Clair The Bear Minimum: the Grizzly and the Future of the Rocky Mountain West Mike Whitney "Iraq Doesn't Exist Anymore": an Interview with Nir Rosen Shemon Salam A Visit From the FBI Roger Burbach The Battle in Bolivia Benjamin Dangl New Politics in Old Bolivia Brian M. Downing The Quiet on the Middle Eastern Front: How Much Credit Goes to the Surge? Greg Moses Night of the Living Redneck: a Texas Horror Story Sonja Karkar The "Never-Never" Peace Conference Saul Landau Ethics and Evil in South Boston Margaret Kimberley Black America Left Behind John Ross What are the Prospects for a New Mexican Revolution? Reza Fiyouzat Exit on the Left: When Che's Children Visited Iran Judith Scherr Berkeley Turns Right for the Holidays Lance Olsen Of Forests and Finance: Logging for the Wealthy Christopher Brauchli Mr. Bush and the Despots Robert Fantina Iraq as U.S. Colony Dan Bacher Fish Triage on Prospect Island Michael Donnelly Remembering How to be Human: John Trudell and the Music of Urgency Website of the Weekend Appalachian Voices   November 30, 2007 Peter Stone Brown The Re-Packaging of Bob Dylan Wajahat Ali The Volatile Mistress: an Interview with Javed Jabbar, Pakistan's Former Minister of Information Allan Nairn Cold-Blooded Celebrity: Thomas L. Friedman and the Bali Bombers Alan Farago The Sorrows of Suburbia: Politics, Sprawl and the Housing Crash John Ross The Death of Latin America's First Revolution Corporate Crime Reporter America's Corporate Crime Capitals Lucia Alvarez Diego Gonzalez Argentina's Political Future James Rothenberg The Iraqi Miracle Website of the Day Bio-Bling?   November 29, 2007 R. F. Blader The Most Dangerous Kind of Bribe Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Distorting Fascism to Demonize Iran Stephen Soldz War on the Couch: Fear, Aggression and Empire Sheldon Richman Iraq 3.0 George Wuerthner Forest Fires, Lies and Chainsaws Felice Pace Did All Things Considered Self-Censor on Annapolis? Col. Dan Smith The Meaning of Annapolis Harvey Wasserman Terror Target Nukes Nikolas Kozloff Primetime Hate Debate: Lou Dobbs, Immigration and Campaign '08 Paul Krassner Huffington Post Bloggers Go On Strike! Dave Lindorff News Not Fit to Print: US Coup Planned for Venezuela? CP News Service The One State Declaration Website of the Day A Native View of Yellowstone Bison Slaughter November 28, 2007 James Petras CIA Destabilization Memo Surfaces on Venezuela Jeff Halper Annapolis: When the Roadmap is a One Way Street Pam Martens Crashing Citigroup Peter Morici Economy in Crisis: Avoiding a Recession Mohammed Khatib Separate and Unequal in Palestine Helen Redmond The Horror and the Hope: Health Care in America William S. Lind In the Fox's Lair: Quiet Before a New Iraq Storm? Ben Tripp We, the People: a Trope for All Seasons Liaquat Ali Khan Pakistan: First, Restore the Constitution and Reinstate the Judges Jeff Berg Holbrooke Says Bush Won't Attack Iran Website of the Day The Lies of Joe Klein   November 27, 2007 Joe DeRaymond On the Road to the Torture School Paul Craig Roberts Meet the Only Two Candidates Worse Than Bush and Cheney: Hillary and Rudy Marjorie Cohn Remembering Victor Rabinowitz Mike Whitney A Dollar the Size of a Postage Stamp Ron Jacobs The Myths of Military Progress Col. Dan Smith The Pentagon's "People System" Still Doesn't Work Ralph Nader Family Learning Karim Makdisi Annapolis and the Unholy Alliance: the View from Beirut Christopher Ketcham Memo to Hollywood Writers: Strike Until You Drop Ronan Bennett Martin Amis Does a Coulter Website of the Day Celebrating the Uncensored Media   November 26, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Heading for Annapolis Paul Craig Roberts The End of All That David Macaray Enter Mediator Sameer Dossani Pakistan's Wounded Dictator Roger Burbach The Final Battle in Bolivia Mark Scaramella Guns and Greed in the Emerald Empire Brian McKinlay Howard's End Rick Kuhn The Fall of a Racist Union Buster Binoy Kampmark Ruddslide and Dull Alec Monica Benderman What Do You Know of War? Brenda Norrell Return to Alcatraz Website of the Day Ghostworld by DJ Spooky   November 24 / 25, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Ordeal of Catherine Wilkerson, MD Robert Fisk Darkness Falls on the Middle East Saul Landau Norman Mailer will Not R.I.P. Jeffrey St. Clair Justice Stephen Breyer, Cancer Bonds and the Origins of Neoliberal Environmentalism Rannie Amiri Beirut's Black Friday Christopher Brauchli Iraq Embassy as Gilded Palace Daniel Gross The Gap and Black Friday Mike Whitney "A Generalized Meltdown of Financial Institutions" Marjorie Cohn Iran and the 2008 Elections David Rosen Senior Sex: the Real Sexual Life of Aging Americans David Michael Green If Conservatism is the Ideology of Freedom .... Kenneth Rexroth When Euripides Played the Hindu Kush: Greeks and Buddhists in Afghanistan Muhammad Iqbal Trans. Shahid Alam Ghazal Website of the Day Aerial Footage of Delta Fish Kill November 23, 2007 Gary Leupp Killing the Buddha in Pakistan's Swat Valley Laura Carlsen Coming to Terms with Diversity in Bolivia: an Interview with Alvaro Garcia, Bolivia's VP David Macaray Keeping Labor Unions Out Andy Worthington Former Guantánamo Detainee Seeks Asylum in Sweden Clifton Ross Trashing Chavez: Keith Olberman's Toxic Rant Seth Sandronsky Battling Sodexho Dan Bacher Death in the Delta: Thousands of Fish Stranded by Bureau of Reclamation William A. Cook The Myth of Middle East Peace Website of the Day Waiting for the Guards: Stress Techniques as Torture, a Short Film   November 22, 2007 Alan Farago Who Lost America's Everglades? Greg Moses A Thanksgiving Basting Dave Lindorff Impeachment is Back on the Table Mike Ely Native Blood: the Myth pf Thanksgiving Omar Azfar Gore for President of Pakistan?   November 21, 2007 Vijay Prashad Our Dictator, Their Democracy Martha Rosenberg Undercover at a Turkey Slaughtering Plant Manuel Garcia, Jr. Epiphany on the Glacier John Ross The Last Days of Mexican Corn Brian McKenna Cancer Terrorists Unmasked Stephen Soldz Isolation Torture Routine at Guatánamo Monica Benderman Needing Peace Ben Terrall Slavery in the Fields: The Real Price of Sugar Website of the Day Mercy for Animals               Subscribe Online

December 26, 2007 Paciencia, Paciencia, More Paciencia Bolivia Amends New Constitution and Faces Mutiny from Within By NORMAN MADARASZ By the end of the week before Christmas, Bolivia's President Evo Morales dealt with his country's constitutional reform as a leader ought to. He rallied a divided country by calling out to South America's soccer greats, Pele and Maradona, to help overturn FIFA's ban on high altitude games. La Paz has been blacklisted due to the altitude-borne ailments suffered by players of the foreign national selections trying to qualify for the 2010 World Cup. Needless to say, Bolivia's internal conflict is not a mere question of nationalism. Nor is its territorial division into low, mid and highland regions merely geographical. As Morales held a talk at a hotel on Friday in the rebel city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Cruzentistas ­ as the locals are known there ­ showered the hotel with debris until repelled by riot police. The city has become the political center of the Media Luna departments (Santa Cruz, Beni and Pando) that have rejected the governing MAS (Movement toward Socialism) party's new Constitution and its bid to redistribute earnings from natural resources to the totality of the country's population. Along with the Tarija, the departments have threatened autonomy and even separation from the Bolivian federation. Constitutional reform is often seen in less heroic terms than all-out revolution. Whatever the effectiveness of the latter in striving for radical change, what constitutional reform has going for it is the persistence of dialogue and debate. Among the greatest contributions to the question are the reflections made by philosopher Immanuel Kant. In his day, he complicated quick assessments of the nature of the French Revolution by arguing that its greatest accomplishment was not the beheading of the monarchy and aristocratic nobility, in short establishing the radical egalitarian Jacobin regime, but implementing a breed of constitutional reform which introduced the notion of civil liberties. Furthermore, faced with the French Revolution's hyper-centralization and flattening of regional differences, Kant was well ahead of his time in vouching for a type of constitution which he called "cosmopolitan". Citizens became the key ingredient to its heady mix. In light of that debate, there is perhaps no situation in the world today treading the delicate line between revolution and reform more than Bolivia. The country is led by the first indigenous President since the birth of the republic over a hundred and seventy years ago, or indeed since Contact. But you would not know that from reading most mainstream media reports in North America. From their perspective, it would appear that yet another Latin American country has been taken hostage by corrupt narcolords or, as in Bolivia's case, "coca-leaf growers". Despite the repetition of that rhyme by the likes of the Wall Street Journal's Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the coca-leaf agricultural economy is rarely given any type of objective analysis. An Aymaran native by birth, Morales became a leader of Quechua farmers after moving to the town of Chapare. Prior to founding MAS, Morales rose to head the cocalero movement. This was a loose-federation of coca-leaf-growing farmers who are predominantly indigenous, poor and powerless. Morales turned the federation into a party and ran in local elections. In the 1997 vote, MAS managed to win four seats in Congress. In 2002, Morales finished second, and MAS became the main opposition in Congress. In 2003, Bolivia's democracy bore its soul when President Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada ordered the military to open fire on a crowd of predominantly indigenous people protesting against decrepit social conditions. More than 60 percent of the population lived below the poverty line, and 51 percent had no access to electricity. Losada was responsible for butchering 60 and leaving hundreds wounded. Faced with the breakdown of the Bolivian State and impending revolution, Losada fled and the country remained in limbo until the December 2005 elections. With the highlander natives as a supporting base, Morales united the left and opposition parties and won the elections with 54 percent of the vote. Whereas huge farm domains in the lowlander Media Luna departments have focused on the monoculture of rice, cotton, sugar cane and then, more recently, soybeans, Bolivia's indigenous populations, living mainly in the mid and highland regions, have historically been left to fend for themselves with subsistence farming. The mines there have always been a source of slavery, even after their privatization in 1985. Part of the indigenous economy is the coca plant, which is cultivated for medical purposes and religious ceremonies. This localized activity came to an end with the market boom in North American demand for cocaine, whose chemical base is extracted from the coca leaf. Blaming the coca-leaf growers for their part in the expansion of cocaine, Ronald Reagan engaged an elite antinarcotics FDA taskforce in 1983 to locally fund and train the Rural Area Police Patrol Unit. Its task was to eradicate 4,000 hectares of crop over a three-year period in exchange for a $ 14.2 million aid package. The war on drugs did not show the extreme non-compliance with international law of today's war on terror, although the efficiency of both is hollow to the core. Then as now, corruption was its main result. Yet back then, the sovereignty of nations had to be respected. The US would spray herbicides only in States calling for its assistance. Bolivia was one such country. Under pressure from Congress that crop eradication was not effective, the US Government suspended funding in June 1986. That was when Bolivia's President Paz Estenssoro secretly engaged Operation Blast Furnace involving more than 150 United States troops in a bid to destroy cocaine laboratories. Despite the drug-based motives for US military intervention in the region, Evo Morales made it clear in a recent speech that his aim is also to support an effective fight against drugs. Yet he stressed firmly that "neither cocaine nor drug trafficking are part of the Bolivian culture," and rejects the presence of U.S. military on Bolivian soil. On December 15, the legislative assembly of Bolivia ratified the new Constitution crafted by the President and his MAS party delegates. Following the delegates, and then the legislators, the Constitution will now be submitted to a nationwide referendum by the people ­ if Bolivia as a united State makes it that far. One of the least admirable items in the Constitution dealt with the President's eligibility for indefinite re-elections. But President Morales was wise enough to quickly ditch the item after his Venezuelan ally, Hugo Chavez, had been forced to concede defeat over his own constitutional reform package due to a similar clause. The structural changes will now have to be caaried out according to the short-term mandates of today's Western-style media-machine democracies. The new Constitution is centered on deep agrarian reform, which would particularly benefit the country's large indigenous population. Collective ownership is to be granted to them by new amendments. Ownership of natural resources would also become collective. For all that, the aim of the Constitution is not to abolish private property, but to submit it to the ethical norms and social and productive targets countering the standards that have long made Bolivia one of the most plutocratic democracies on the continent -- no small thanks to United Nations' Millennium Development Project head, Jeffrey Sachs. Sachs worked as economic advisor to President Paz Estenssoro to curb quadruple-digit to single-digit inflation, but the state of the country's poverty level fell flatly short of his economic "shock therapy". In addition to redrawing the country's economic map, the new Constitution also enshrines the rights of the country's ethnic groups. Cosmopolitan it is with respect to the rights of groups, though by all appearances its attempt at redirecting the economy has the citizen gaining most in the long term. It is no overstament, then, to claim that the political reconstruction of Bolivia has become a real-time laboratory in constitutional innovation. Opposed to this process are the Media Luna region departments, home to the country's wealthiest and whitest. In addition to the soybean monoculture, Bolivia's huge natural gas resources are found there. In a country with an indigenous majority of some 70 percent, the Constitution directly challenges Media Luna's historical exclusiveness. As in an act of foresight, one of the key items in the Constitution is the granting of greater autonomy to the nation's departments. But this is an item to be negotiated on a federal basis. For all of Morales's posturing to cutting off unilateral declarations, an act of secession on the regions' part would obviously make the Constitution void. At this point, one of the most extremist voices in Bolivia is the Croatian-born soybean magnate, Branko Marinkovic, owner of 3000 hectares of land. He also heads the Santa Cruz Civil Committee, which has openly called for civil disobedience to the new Constitution. The character of the conflict is ethnic as well as economic. Anti-indigenous racism is commonplace in Santa Cruz. In its December 19, 2007 issue, Brazil's left-of-center news weekly, CartaCapital reports mayor of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Percy Fernández, as saying: "from the look of things, we'll have to paint our faces and use feathered arrows to be able to exist in this country." That's why the combined official visit of Chile and Brazil's governments to La Paz, accompanied by the CEO of Petrobras, on the Monday immediately following the Constitution's ratification was a key event. Petrobras committed itself to investments amounting to $1 billion in energy-based industry. This marked a return to the South American community of Brazil's giant conglomerate after the Morales-led nationalization of the gas industry in 2006. Petrobras was stripped of a history of development and Brazil's natural gas supply was jeopardized as the Morales government attempted to restore ownership of gas resources to the indigenous population. A year was to pass before Argentina brought Venezuela's sole support of Bolivia against a blockade of oil-industry corporations to an end. On October 19, former President Nestor Kirchner signed an agreement with Bolivia for a supply of 27 million cubic-meters of gas per day, at five dollars per million BTUs, and re-adjustable over time. For Bolivia, the deal was extremely favorable. As for Chile, President Michelle Bachelet has offered to develop a corridor to the Pacific, which would facilitate direct international trade for landlocked Bolivia. In a public address given on the last day of his visit in La Paz, President Lula da Silva begged both sides for "patience, patience and more patience" to deal with internal "political disturbances". But his and Bachelet's message was clear. There would be no foreign support for regional separation and an undermining of Bolivia's federation. A number of foreign observers fear that the country is on the verge of civil war. Reports cite the presence Colombian nationals, allegedly linked to rightwing paramilitary squads, in the Santa Cruz region. Considering that Bolivia's strategic Venezuelan ally is now in an open battle with Colombia's President Uribe, turmoil in Bolivia could draw in its two neighbors. How does the US stand on Bolivia? Historically, the US crop war on Bolivia's coca plantations was both a direct and indirect support of the white population. Corruption has made it difficult to evaluate what has been achieved on the ground in terms of sponsoring indigenous agricultural alternatives. The US may also be involved in the increased presence of Colombians, given that through its Plan Colombia and other post-9/11 aid to counter "narcoterrorism" Colombia has become the largest recipient of aid in Latin America, second only to Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan worldwide. Morales' campaign pledge to decriminalize growing coca-leaves is being inflated as the injustice against which the US ought to act, thereby finally "reasserting" itself in its "historic role" in the region. As for Lula and his astute foreign minister, Celso Amorim, throughout the ousting of Petrobras, both held to the ethical virtues of firm negotiations. This is one of the reasons why, liberal macroeconomic policies aside, both Chavez and Morales respect Lula. At any rate, Lula's microeconomic performance has been outstanding. From all the cynicism from the rightwing about "assistentialist" policies, his Bolsa Familia program has boosted millions out of dire poverty and has created a consumer base garnering enthusiastic applause even from such conservative economists as Antonio Delfim Netto. Growth has exceeded five percent in many of the country's poorer regions. Questioned in a December 19 interview by the Brazilian on-line journal, Carta Maior, Bolivia's brilliant mathematician and sociologist Vice-President, Alvaro Garcia Linera, hides nothing of his Marxist analysis of the country's economic structure. Yet in terms of international trade, he clearly intends for his people to benefit from the best the market can offer. The question remains whether one can benefit from market forces from without while undermining their tendency to class and ethnic disparity from within. In his own words, Linera focuses the logic of State leadership on negotiating. He described his own commitment as "first, helping to reconvert some of the ways people think in the popular sectors and some of their resistance habits into managerial habits, whose decisions the State will carry out. Second, making the State into a true synthesis that entirely connotes society, and not merely the State as a faction. The State as the materialization of social alliances, of all citizens. It is the idea of a real State, not an apparent one." One aspect surely worth pointing out in the Cruzenista calls for autonomy, without going into details of the country's history, is that the Santa Cruz department received direct transfer of funds and agricultural subsidies from the federal government until the 1990s. Now that it has struck it big with soybean and natural gas, its option is to go it alone. With a background of Croat ustachi, fascist and fascist-sympathetic immigration at the end of World War II, the region's social fiber is a far cry from the ethical blood required to carry out the reforms. The worst is to be feared regarding the measures Cruzenistas will implement to secure their tally. As a probable portent, a bomb exploded on Christmas Eve at the headquarters of the syndicate Morales once led. Morales already reshuffled key army leadership positions in June, after a military-led coup was rumored to be taking shape. Even so, private intelligence analyses report that the armed forces remain under the control of, and loyal to, the presidency. At this point, the federal institutions do not seem to want to risk a civil war. Norman Madarasz, a Canadian, is professor of philosophy at the Graduate School of Universidade Gama Filho and at the Law Department of the Universidade Estadual de Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), both in Rio de Janeiro. He welcomes comments at nmphd2@yahoo.ca.     Your Ad Here

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