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Today's
Stories
October
6, 2003
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorcese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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October
6, 2003
Upheaval in Bolivia
Crisis
and Opportunity
By
FORREST HYLTON
Describing the rising tide of mobilization against
his government, Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez Lozada-known
in a previous incarnation as "the most intelligent neoliberal"
in Latin America-put it succinctly: "They want to govern
from the streets, not from parliament and within our institutions."
That being the case, Sánchez de Lozada has militarized
the highways and city streets nationwide; a potential prelude
to an officially declared "State of Siege." Following
a year in which "parliamentary cretinism" and an absence
of competent leadership have debilitated the anti-neoliberal
forces unleashed in April 2000 in Cochabamba and the Aymara highlands,
opposition movements have returned to their roots on the highways,
mountaintops and in the streets. Las bases (the rank-and-file)
have taken the initiative from their leaders.
After the road blockades in January and
the urban working-class uprisings in February, Sánchez
de Lozada's administration teetered briefly on the brink of extinction,
but the opposition movements were incapable of uniting and organizing
around a set of common demands, and the leading opposition force,
Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), switched tactics in favor of
a conservative, social democratic approach that prioritized the
2004 municipal elections (as opposed to direct action and participatory
democracy). Backed by the U.S. Embassy, Sánchez de Lozada,
naming the armed forces as the "pillar of democracy,"
held on to the reins of power, fumbling his way through the spring
and summer. There has been no justice for the fifty-seven civilians
murdered by his government since he took office a year ago.
The future of Sánchez de Lozada's
presidency is once again uncertain, however, for opposition to
the export of Bolivian gas to the U.S. via Chile, combined with
characteristically brutal government repression, has led to a
rapid polarization of social conflict whose epicenter lies north
of La Paz, near Lake Titicaca, in the Aymara region of Huarina,
Warisata, Achacachi and Sorata; and El Alto, an Aymara city of
700,000 on the upper edge of La Paz. Though personalism and
sectarianism still divide the Aymara movement internally, as
well as in relation to the coca-growers' movement, unlike the
previous conflicts in the cycle of revolt that began in April
2000-centered on coca production, water privatization, land tenure
law, and tax hikes-the latest round of conflict may lead to greater
programmatic unity among opposition forces.
Rural and urban schoolteachers; students
studying to be schoolteachers; parents of conscripts; retired
miners; Aymara peasant leaders; inter-provincial truckers; university
students from El Alto; the Bolivian Workers' Central (COB); all
are on strike, some on hunger strikes. In addition to sectoral
demands, each organization clamors for popular sovereignty over
Bolivian gas and rejects the FTAA; most demand the resignation
of Sánchez de Lozada and his draconian ministers, Yerko
Kukoc, Minister of Government, and Carlos Sánchez de Berzaín,
Minister of Defense, who are responsible for the massacre in
Warisata on September 20, in which six Aymara community members-including
eight year-old Marlene Nancy Rojas Ramos-were murdered after
government forces moved in to evacuate several hundred tourists
stranded for five days in Sorata by road blockades. The massacre,
let us note, took place the day after the National Coordination
for the Defense of Gas mobilized 30,000 people in Cochabamba
and 50,000 in La Paz. In response to state terror, which made
use of planes and helicopters, poorly armed but strategically
placed Aymara community militias drove the army and police out
of Warisata, Sorata and Achacachi.
On October 2, Aymara community militias
continued to control the area around Huarina, Warisata, Achacachi
and Sorata, while the roads in the provinces of Manco Capac,
Los Andes, Omasuyus, Larecaja, Muñecas, Camacho, Villarroel-and,
partially, Murillo and Aroma-remained blocked with stones. Eugenio
Rojas, leader of the regional strike committee, declared that
if the government refuses to negotiate in Warisata, then the
insurgent Aymara communities will surround La Paz and cut it
off from the rest of the country-a tactic pioneered in the Túpaj
Katari rising of 1781. Led by the Regional Workers' Central
(COR), El Alto was paralyzed by a civic strike: no stores opened,
no vehicles circulated, and market vendors, people from neighborhood
committees, and university students battled riot police throughout
the afternoon.
At least five people were detained under
the new "Citizen Security Law," and the day before,
on October 1, six Indian community peasants were detained in
the province of Aroma. In Cochabamba, a group of leading writers
and intellectuals issued a pronouncement calling for the formation
of a new government that would defend national sovereignty and
revise the laws concerning multinational oil companies, while
the 2,500 landless peasants who staged an occupation on September
24 in San Cayetano, Santa Cruz, blocked the bridge at Chané-the
only route into the region.
Potosí, once the center of the
colonial silver economy, was the site of a large Indian peasant
march, and the roads connecting it to the rest of the country
were also blocked. By evening, Aymara peasant colonizers from
the Yungas-a sub-tropical, coca-producing region northeast of
La Paz and adjacent to Omasuyos, the heartland of Aymara rebellion-had
begun to blockade, meaning that the two principal tourist regions
near La Paz are now off limits to tourists.
On Monday October 6, road blockades are
set to begin in the Chapare, the principal coca-growing region
in the eastern lowlands, and Oruro, which connects La Paz with
Cochabamba. If they succeed, thinly stretched government troops
are likely to overreact with more violence and murder, and if
they do it's anyone's guess what will happen next.
Forrest Hylton
is conducting doctoral research in history in Bolivia and can
be reached at forresthylton@hotmail.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorcese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
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