The U.S. Prepares for Military Action in Bolivia

Strategic Culture Foundation

Nil NIKANDROV

January 22, 2013

The scandal over the «scientific team from the USA» broke out, despite attempts by the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia to kill it off. In June 2012, a team of team of specialists numbering 50 people came to the country, ostensibly to study the adverse effects of high altitude on humans and their capacity for rapid recovery of their fighting ability. To avoid attracting attention, the Americans used tourist visas and passed through border control in small groups. One group of these specialists went to the Yungas area, and another group to the slopes of Mount Chacaltaya. «Tourist» trails have been laid in the border areas with Peru and Chile. →

[TIPNIS] Alvaro Garcia Linera: Geopolitics of the Amazon – Part V (Final)

[To see the Table of Contents, click here. A glossary of terms and acronyms appearing in the text will be found here. Translation by Richard Fidler, Life on the Left]

On so-called “extractivism”

Since Marx, we know that what characterizes and differentiates societies is the way in which they organize the production, distribution and use of the material and symbolic resources they possess. In other words, the mode of production[1] is what defines the material content of the social life of the distinct human territorial collectivities (nations, peoples, communities), within which there can be differentiated the historically specific form in which each of their components develop, and the manner in which various existing modes of production interrelate within the same society.

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[TIPNIS] Alvaro Garcia Linera: Geopolitics of the Amazon – Part IV

[To see the Table of Contents, click here. A glossary of terms and acronyms appearing in the text will be found here. Translated by Richard Fidler, Life on the Left]

Three colonialist fallacies of opponents of the proposed TIPNIS roadway

The first fallacy is the argument that with the highway the coca leaf producers will invade the TIPNIS. There is at this point no type of coercive measure that prevents them entering the Park using the roads that already exist within it; however, they are not doing so. Moreover, the unions of coca producers were the very ones that in 1990 defined with the government a “red line” within the TIPNIS that they voluntarily agreed not to cross. Since then, any compañero who crosses that line, instead of counting on the support of his union and federation, is liable to be removed from where he is living by the law enforcement agencies, as has happened in recent months. Compliance with this demarcation is now the responsibility of the coca leaf producers themselves, and not the result of any public force or law that prevents them from approaching. →

[TIPNIS] Alvaro Garcia Linera: Geopolitics of the Amazon – Part III

[To see the Table of Contents, click here. A glossary of terms and acronyms appearing in the text will be found here.Translation by Richard Fidler, Life on the Left]

The historic demand for construction of a road to unite the Amazon valleys and plains

But first let us analyze the history of the demand for construction of this highway that would have to pass through the TIPNIS. Is it true that it is part of a sinister plan for “inter-oceanic corridors that would pillage the forests and suck us into the vortex of the Brazilian empire,” as the recipe of some NGOs would have it?[1]

The historical need for a road connecting the Andean zone with the Amazon region, through what used to be called the “Mountains of the Yuracarees,” now the Isiboro-Sécure park, dates back more than 300 years. →

[TIPNIS] Alvaro Garcia Linera: Geopolitics of the Amazon – Part II

[To see the Table of Contents, click here. A glossary of terms and acronyms appearing in the text will be found here. Translation by Richard Fidler, Life on the Left]

December 12, 2012

Capitalist Subsumption of the Amazon Indigenous Economy

Finally, in addition to the vertical nature of this despotic power there is a territorial dependency of the regional power structure itself. The major part of the Bolivian Amazon lies in the department of Beni, and the major productive activities in the region today are ranching, timber extraction and chestnut harvesting. →

[TIPNIS] Alvaro Garcia Linera: Geopolitics of the Amazon – Part I

Introduction and translation by Richard Fidler, Life on the Left

Revolution and Counterrevolution in Bolivia

Bolivian leader replies to critics of the Morales government’s development strategy

Introduction

Álvaro García Linera is one of Latin America’s leading Marxist intellectuals. He is also the Vice-President of Bolivia — the “co-pilot,” as he says, to President Evo Morales, and an articulate exponent of the government’s policies and strategic orientation.

In a recent book-length essay, Geopolitics of the Amazon: Patrimonial-Hacendado Power and Capitalist Accumulation, published in September 2012, García Linera discusses a controversial issue of central importance to the development process in Latin America, and explains how Bolivia is attempting to address the intersection between economic development and environmental protection. →

End to USAID Spying Looms in Latin America

Nil NIKANDROV

September 26, 2012

Strategic Culture Foundation

“In June 2012, foreign ministers of the ALBA bloc countries passed a resolution on USAID. It read: «Citing foreign aid planning and coordination as a pretext, USAID openly meddles in sovereign countries’ domestic affairs, sponsoring NGOs and protest activities intended to destabilize legitimate governments which are unfavorable from Washington’s perspective. …In most ALBA countries, USAID operates via its extensive NGO networks, which it runs outside of the due legal framework, and also illicitly funds media and political groups.”

 

The ejection of USAID from Russia was a long-awaited and welcome development. Moscow has repeatedly warned its US partners via an array of channels of communication that the tendency of USAID to interfere with Russia’s domestic affairs was unacceptable and, particularly, that the radicalism of its pet NGOs in the Caucasus would not be tolerated. When, on October 1, the decision made by the Russian leadership takes effect, the Moscow-based USAID staff which has been stubbornly ignoring the signals will have to pack and relocate to other countries facing allegations of authoritarian rule…

In Latin America, USAID has long earned a reputation of an organization whose offices are, in fact, intelligence centers scheming to undermine legitimate governments in a number of the continent’s countries. The truth that USAID hosts CIA and US Defense Intelligence Agency operatives is not deeply hidden, as those seem to have played a role in every Latin American coup, providing financial, technical, and ideological support to respective oppositions. USAID also typically seeks engagement with the local armed forces and law-enforcement agencies, recruiting within them agents ready to lend a hand to the opposition when the opportunity arises.

To varying extents, all of the Latin American populist leaders felt the USAID pressure. No doubt, Venezuela’s H. Chavez is the number one target on the USAID enemies list. Support for the regime’s opponents in the country shrank considerably since the massive 2002-2004 protests as the nation saw the government refocus on socioeconomic issues, health care, housing construction, and youth policies. The opposition had to start relying more on campaigns in the media, around 80% of which are run by the anti-Chavez camp. Panic-provoking rumors about imminent food supply disruptions, overstated reports about the crime level in Venezuela (where, actually, there is less crime than in most countries friendly to the US), and allegations of government incompetence in response to technological disasters which became suspiciously frequent as the elections drew closer are bestowed on the audiences as a part of the subversive scenario involving a network of Venezuelan NGOs. In some cases, the membership of the latter can be limited to 3-4 people, but, coupled to strong media support, the opposition can prove to be an ominous force. Pro-Chavez commentators are worried that USAID agents will contest the outcome of the vote and, synchronously, paramilitary groups will plunge Venezuelan cities into chaos to give the US a pretext for a military intervention.

USAID is known to have contributed to the recent failed coup in Ecuador, during which president R. Correa narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. Elite police forces heavily sponsored by the US and the media which made use of the liberal free speech legislation to smear Correa were the key actors in the outbreak. Subsequently, it took Correa serious efforts to get a revised media code approved in the parliament contrary to the USAID-lobbied resistance.

Several bids to displace the government of Evo Morales clearly employed the USAID operative potential in Bolivia. According to journalist and author Eva Golinger, USAID poured at least $85m into destabilizing the regime in the country. Initially, the US hoped to achieve the desired result by entraining the separatists from the predominantly white Santa Cruz district. When the plan collapsed, USAID switched to courting the Indian communities with which the ecology-oriented NGOs started to get in touch a few years before. Disorienting accounts were fed to the Indians that the construction of an expressway across their region would leave the communities landless, and the Indian protest marches to the capital that followed ate away at the public standing of Morales. It transpired shortly that many of the marches including those staged by the TIPNIS group, had been coordinated by the US embassy. The job was done by embassy official Eliseo Abelo, a USAID curator for the Bolivian indigenous population. His phone conversations with the march leaders were intercepted by the Bolivian counter-espionage agency and made public, so that he had to escape from the country while the US diplomatic envoy to Bolivia complained about the phone tapping.

In June 2012, foreign ministers of the ALBA bloc countries passed a resolution on USAID. It read: «Citing foreign aid planning and coordination as a pretext, USAID openly meddles in sovereign countries’ domestic affairs, sponsoring NGOs and protest activities intended to destabilize legitimate governments which are unfavorable from Washington’s perspective. Documents released from the US Department of State archives carry evidence that financial support had been provided to parties and groups oppositional to the governments of ALBA countries, a practice tantamount to undisguised and audacious interference on the US behalf. In most ALBA countries, USAID operates via its extensive NGO networks, which it runs outside of the due legal framework, and also illicitly funds media and political groups. We are convinced that our countries have no need for external financial support to maintain the democracy established by Latin American and Caribbean nations, or for externally guided organizations which try to weaken or sideline our government institutions». The ministers called the ALBA leaderships to immediately deport USAID representatives who threaten the sovereignty and political stability of the countries where they work. The resolution was signed by Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Paul J. Bonicelli was confirmed by the US Senate as the USAID Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean last May. Former USAID chief Mark Feuerstein gained such notoriety in Latin America as the brain behind the ousters of the legitimate leaders of Honduras and Paraguay that the continent’s politicians simply had to learn to avoid him. The USAID credibility is increasingly drying up, and it is unlikely that Bonicelli, a PhD and a conservative, will be able to reverse the tendency. His record includes heading various USAID divisions and «promoting democracy» in concert with the US National Security Council.

Bonicelli’s views are reflected in his papers in the Foreign Policy journal. To Bonicelli, Chavez is not a democrat but a leader eager to get rid of all of his opponents. The new USAID boss holds that, apart from the drug threat, Chavez – having inspired populist followers in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua – poses the biggest challenge to the US interests in Latin America. Bonicelli therefore urges the US to prop up the Venezuelan opposition in every way possible, providing material support and training, so that it can maximally take part in elections and civilian activities.

Another paper by Bonicelli portrays Russia’s present-day evolution as grim regress and a slide towards «neo-Tsarism». Based on the perception, Bonicelli argues that the West should hold Russia and its leaders accountable in whatever concerns freedom and democracy – even if freedom in the country is important to just a handful of people – and cites the case of Poland where the US used to stand by Lech Wa??sa.

Chances are slim that a reform of USAID would restore the agency’s credibility in Latin America. Sticking to a trimmed list of priorities, USAID axed a few minor programs and shut down its offices in Chile, Argentine, Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Panama, with Brazil next in line. USAID believes that the above countries are already in reasonable shape and no longer need assistance, so that the agency can throw its might against its main foes – the populists and Cuba, and do its best to have the politicians unfriendly to Washington removed across the Western Hemisphere. The stated USAID budget for Latin America is $750m, but estimates show that the secret part of the funding, which is leveraged by the CIA, may total twice the amount.

 

BOLIVIA | Evo Morales Bluntly Describes US Diplomacy

Nil NIKANDROV

October 27, 2012

Strategic Culture Foundation

“Bolivia’s next step is going to be to similarly insulate itself from USAID as well as from the National Endowment for Democracy and the International Republican Institute. Those are known to be behind anti-government groups and NGOs in Bolivia such as the Youth for Development organization, the Governance and Development Institute, the Civil Advocates Institute, etc. Over the years of its presence in Bolivia, USAID formed a fifth column of the opposition intellectual elite, media people, and student associations in the country.”

 

Bolivian leader Evo Morales tends to speak in a carefully chosen language, in part as a precaution natural for someone who is permanently under fire from his opponents. It long became a staple of the US propaganda to portray Morales as an individual who does not measure up to the standards normally associated with his status, and on the fringes the campaign against the Latin American country’s first indigenous president chronically slips into downright racism.

After a period of evident restraint, Morales did respond to the US invectives in an unusually blunt manner in a recent Decolonizaton Day address (the Decolonizaton Day is Bolivia’s official title for the date of the discovery of America). He said that, in contrast to the recent past when Bolivian army and security officers flocked to the US diplomatic mission in La Paz as the connection used to guarantee a successful career, these days relations with the U.S. Embassy have become so bad they are “like a turd.”. According to Morales, now the police and army staff fear being spotted attending the US embassy as the majority of Bolivians frown on such contacts and regard US diplomats as enemies of Bolivia. The former Bolivian governments were heavily dependent on the US which was practically able to hand out appointments within the army and police hierarchies, but the current Bolivian administration managed to put an end to the arrangement.

Morales revisited the US-Bolivian relations when, next day, he spoke in Santa Cruz at the graduation ceremony for 630 Cuban-trained Bolivian medical doctors. “Over the past 50 years, the US have cultivated an asymmetrical, disrespectful, abusive and dominant relationship with Bolivia”, said Morales. He charged that Washington never wanted Bolivia on the development path and that the US imposed on his country such cooperation programs that actually impeded its progress and served to perpetuate its inferior-partner condition. Morales also touched upon the theme of the fight against drug trafficking and expressed a view that Washington’s secret agenda was not aimed at defeating the drug cartels. Rather, as he explained, the US DEA felt that the flourishing of the drug business created pretexts for the US meddling and subduing – ideologically and politically – the Bolivian army and police. The US hoped to treat Bolivia as “a political pawn” while implementing an imperial doctrine and, in the settings, to grab control over Bolivia’s natural resources, held Morales.

Morales maintains that the prospects for the relations with the US are dire as Bolivia’s nationalizations of its natural riches will stay forever on the grievances list in Washington. In the past, the US as Bolivia’s lender was able to exercise political dictate, but the ill tradition was erased when Morales was propelled to power in a national vote in 2006. The US interests and the present-day Bolivian policies – sovereignty and economic independence, the socialist course, etc – are obviously impossible to reconcile. Morales is convinced that the above is the reason behind Washington’s pressure and continuous conspiracy games. The Bolivian leader accuses the US of undermining the country’s efforts to become a democratic nation with high levels of social justice and civil activity, and of pursuing deliberately divisive policies. US ambassador Philip Goldberg who was ejected from Bolivia a few years ago had been dispatched to the country to put into practice a destabilization program intended to ignite racial hate, to foster confrontations, and, ultimately, to provoke a civil war, said Morales, citing Goldberg’s record of corrosive activities in the former Yugoslavia.

Morales frequently invokes in his speeches the facts revealing the subversive role taken by the US Embassy in Bolivia. It put obstacles in the way of organizing the Bolivian national assembly and encouraged separatism in the five of Bolivia’s provinces which sit on important deposits of natural reserves and contribute 75-80% of the national GDP. While a referendum demonstrated that 2/3 of Bolivians support the socioeconomic course Morales is steering, the US diplomats and agents did a huge job with a multimillion budget to plunge the country into a state of discord. USAID helped form opposition youth gangs, sponsored anti-government rallies, and planted myriads of increasingly radical NGOs in Bolivia. The US Embassy’s plane was used to shift protesters to the Beni and Pando departments where they tried to block the airports and to prevent the arrival of Morales when he planned to personally help the situation revert to normalcy on site. In September, 2008, Morales declared Goldberg persona non grata over charges that the US diplomat assisted separatists in Bolivia. A bunch of CIA and DEA officers caught recruiting the Bolivian army and security staff or spying on Morales were also deported. The Bolivian security agency warned that the intensification of the US monitoring of Morales’ rides could be indicative of preparations for an assassination attempt. Morales said that the ousters made it possible to get rid of the problems the US was creating to slow down the process of change in Bolivia and that he never regretted showing the US ambassador the door.

It is clear though that the US Embassy remains hyperactive in Bolivia. Information surfaced that cars with US diplomatic license plates were used to transfer firearms, and the US diplomats’ attempts to mobilize the Indian communities’ resistance to government policies were strictly documented by the Bolivian authorities. A terrorist group comprising CIA contractors from Europe – mostly individuals with combat experience earned in the Balkan region – was intercepted during an attempt to infiltrate Bolivia. Some of the terrorists were mowed down in a raid launched by the Bolivian police and a number of others – currently stand trial after a probe which took three years. Still, 17 of the 39 members of the terrorist group escaped to the US. Those facing charges in Bolivia receive legal and financial support from abroad and the US propaganda claims that the whole investigation and trial are a show staged by the administration of Morales.

Bolivia decided to fully rebuild the diplomatic ties with the US in late 2011 and, after a round of consultations, signed a framework agreement with Washington. The plan called for the countries’ exchanging ambassadors, plus a deal on the struggle against drug trafficking was penned in January, 2012, but the process stalled on March 7, 2012 when the US released an extremely negative assessment of the Bolivian anti-narcotic initiatives. Shortly after giving a talk at a session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna, Morales slammed DEA over illicit maneuvering in Bolivia. For Morales, the DEA refusal to recognize Bolivia’s accomplishments was a clear case of political pressure: he said to justify the expulsion of DEA from Bolivia that the agency, in contrast to the UN, always slapped poor grades on the country for anti-drug policies and that DEA was essentially a political instrument used to discredit anti-imperialist government officials and labor union leaders.

Bolivia’s next step is going to be to similarly insulate itself from USAID as well as from the National Endowment for Democracy and the International Republican Institute. Those are known to be behind anti-government groups and NGOs in Bolivia such as the Youth for Development organization, the Governance and Development Institute, the Civil Advocates Institute, etc. Over the years of its presence in Bolivia, USAID formed a fifth column of the opposition intellectual elite, media people, and student associations in the country. On top of that, US maintains in Bolivia a network of analytical laboratories where Bolivian and foreign experts compose blueprints for anti-government campaigns. Wayne Nilsestuen is the USAID Mission Director in Bolivia, and his crew consists of CIA operatives working under diplomatic cover. The CIA station in Bolivia exists under the name of the Embassy’s political section. The real occupatione of the section staff is no secret to the Bolivian counter-espionage service. Geoffrey Schadrack is the CIA resident and his subordinates – Robert Crotty, Eric Whittington, Richmond Blake, Eric Camus, and others – are mostly fairly young people. The US Embassy also hosts officers from the US Defense Intelligence Agency.

Larry L. Memmott is the US charge affairs in Bolivia. He entered the field of diplomacy in 1987 as the US vice consul in La Paz and later mostly focused on Latin American countries, but, being a fluent speaker of Russian, also stayed in the post-Soviet Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in 2008-2011. Like his peers, Memmott is no fan of the Bolivian populist regime, but he is a person with romantic inclinations and does not have the appearance of a sinister CIA agent who tortures inmates in secret jails worldwide. Memmott likes to travel across Bolivia to take pictures which he puts on display in his blog.

It is an open question whether Memmott will make it through his term in Bolivia without running into serious conflicts with the country’s administration. Morales stated unequivocally that Bolivia is an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and anti-liberal country where the US interference would not be tolerated. The Bolivian president has a reputation for keeping his pledges – and his recent talk left no doubt that, from Morales’ perspective, the US diplomacy simply stinks.

 

BOLIVIA | The United States Uses Diplomacy to Destroy Nations

Since the decade of the 50s, U.S. administrations have implemented policies intended to destroy the nations that do not coincide with its ideology and do not respect its hegemony.

Cambio Newspaper

October 16, 2012

Juan Carlos Zambrana Marchetti (*)

“Without a doubt, the Right that is being promoted and financed by the U.S. will react, but to delay this defensive action would be to make the same mistake of the revolution of 1952. Bolivia also has to shut down all of the channels of penetration, including NGOs such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which, using as a parapet the Instituto de Democracia y Gobernabilidad, even this far into the process of change can still give itself the luxury of rounding up the best political science students of the country with the pretext of an essay contest to take the 30 best to the city of Sucre, all expenses paid, to “teach” them how to present to the Plurinational Legislative Assembly a citizens’ project on intercultural matters and governability that obviously reflects the agenda of the United States for Bolivia.”

In recent days, President Evo Morales and the Minister of the Presidency, Juan Ramón Quintana, expressed separately the discontent and the harm caused by the incessant subversive U.S. campaign against Bolivia. Several of us Bolivians have agreed that the interventionism of the United States in Bolivian territory is reaching intolerable limits.

On Friday, October 12, 2012, I said on Eva Golinger’s program, Detrás de la Noticia, that “the diplomatic relations of countries that distance themselves from the policies of the United States, are very difficult because Washington uses the access that such relations provide to  invade them with the power of all its agencies that are experts in coup d’états, promoting the opposition, exacerbating conflicts and establishing bases for what later becomes a program of nation building; but it rather means the destruction of countries, since it begins with the destruction of the original anti-imperialist nation in order to replace it with one that is complacent, or, if that is not possible, divide it in two, so as to build against the anti-imperialist nation its antagonist Siamese twin, which from then on, will do the dirty work of the counter-revolution”.

Despite the signing of the new framework agreement on diplomatic relations, Bolivia remains irremediably tied to the disastrous Point IV agreement of 1951 for technical cooperation, through which the United States adjudicated to itself the right to intervene directly in Bolivian politics by means of aid that was supervised by its agents and of programs that were independent from any supervision by the Bolivian government.

The goal was to move rightward the MNR’s socialism and nationalism, corrupt the revolution of 1952, restore and indoctrinate the armed forces that had been dissolved by the people, prepare them for the military dictatorships of the 70s and 80s, and impose the imperialism of the 90s and the 2000s. Absolutely everything is based on the agreement of 1951.

The first guideline for subjection is written into the title of the agreement, which reads: “Point four general agreement for technical cooperation between the United States of America and Bolivia.” Regrettably, it seems that no one in Bolivia thought of questioning the meaning of the mysterious Point IV.

It turns out that the program called Point IV, through which the United States signed bilateral agreements with the countries of the Third World, was the program of technical and economic assistance in the fields of agriculture, military affairs, scholarships, information, and political advisors that was created by president Harry Truman in 1949 and approved by Congress in June of 1950. It got the name of Point IV because it was the fourth foreign policy objective he mentioned in his speech. What was not mentioned in the agreements was that that point was clearly related to point three of the same speech, which established as an objective to “strengthen freedom-loving nations against the dangers of aggression.” →

Right Click for War

September 24, 2012

skookum: *An online journal of the American psyche in transition*

by Jay Taber

In his book Peddlers of Crisis, Jerry Sanders examined the systematic integration of perception management during the Cold War. Noting how synchronized government propaganda, mainstream media and authoritative academia — the prototype for the Total Information Awareness program at the National Security Agency — was orchestrated to support endless war, Sanders remarked that to keep the money flowing, they had to make everyone believe the Russians were ten feet tall. Fast forward to the post Cold War, and the peddlers of crisis are now online social entrepreneurs, working in tandem with the traditional warmongers on the task of manipulating public sentiment in support of the new and improved American empire.

In her expose of Avaaz — the creme de la creme of neoliberal activism — Cory Morningstar details the consumer branding by the imperial network of financiers like Soros Open Society. Profiling the entrepreneurs in the pro-war, champagne circuit of e-advocacy, Morningstar illustrates the premise that in order to be pro-democracy one has to be anti-fraud. If fraudulent polls and cooked up member lists constitute the justification for the elite’s imperial project, then right-clicking for war means the revolution has finally been funded. The only problem is that the project has consequences–like 9/11.

Blowback from people pissed off at American supported tyrants or American promoted invasions of their countries may not concern the Ivory Tower activists, but for those of us going without food, shelter or medicine while the U.S. Treasury bails out banks and finances aggression worldwide, perpetual warfare at the expense of general welfare is a real problem–not a ten foot tall myth.