Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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an edtio from thsi morning's guardian.
more context for the bolivian actions:
Quote:
Morales is taking Bolivia out of the shadow of the US
The president has joined the radical bloc by taking over energy resources and signing a trade deal with Castro and Chávez
Roger Burbach
Monday May 8, 2006
The Guardian
With the nationalisation of Bolivia's natural gas and petroleum resources President Evo Morales, the country's first indigenous president, is dramatically reshaping his country's destiny. On May 1 he proclaimed "a historic day has arrived. Now the gas and oil that flows from our land will no longer belong to foreigners". This came just after his return from Havana, where he signed what was called the people's trade agreement with Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.
Until these dramatic steps, it was unclear what direction Morales was moving in during his first three months in office. He and his foreign minister held at least four talks with the US ambassador in Bolivia, David Greenlee, in which both sides seemingly extended the olive branch. As Greenlee said in March after one of the meetings: "We have a constructive dialogue with the government of Bolivia over a wide range of themes and mutual interests."
Two factors compelled Morales to seize Bolivia's national resources and to realign the country internationally: the militancy of the country's peasant, worker and indigenous movements, and the decision of the US to foist free-trade agreements on Colombia and Peru that severely damaged Bolivian exports to other Andean nations.
Morales and his political party, MAS, the Movement for Socialism, took power in January with a clear popular mandate. Social uprisings starting in 2000 demanded that the state nationalise the country's natural gas and petroleum so the lucrative profits of these industries could be used to help lift South America's poorest country out of poverty. Three presidents resigned or were forced out of office by these popular protests.
Until May 1, some of the country's popular movements felt that Morales had reneged on his campaign promises as he did little more than state that Bolivia already "owned its resources". His approval ratings dropped from 80% to 68%. But as one observer in La Paz notes, "Evo is a masterful politician". Morales chose this moment to act because of the elections for the constituent assembly, scheduled for July. The assembly will have the power to redraft the country's constitution and reshape its political institutions.
As Vice-President Alvaro García Linares has noted, the goal of MAS is "to achieve hegemony", and the assembly is central to this process. Bolivia has been unstable for years because of poverty, military revolts and the conniving of the country's political elites as they loot the public treasury. As in Venezuela prior to Chávez's election, the traditional parties are viewed as bankrupt. Morales and MAS want to breathe new life into the political and social institutions, to give voice to the country's indigenous poor who have been exploited by the caras, the faces of white oppression that have dominated Bolivia since the Spanish conquest.
With the government's expropriation decree, 15 corporations have been nationalised. These had foreign capital from a wide variety of nations, including the US, Spain, Britain, Brazil, France and the Netherlands. Seizing control of these enterprises goes to hand in hand with Bolivia's audacious steps in the trade arena. MAS and Morales view neoliberalism, US trade agreements and corporate-driven globalisation as major obstacles to the country's development.
This year, Colombia signed a so-called "free-trade agreement" with the US that is particularly harmful to Bolivia. Sixty per cent of Bolivia's major agricultural export, soya beans, currently goes to Colombia. The US-Colombian accord means that cheap, subsidised US grains will flood Colombia, driving out Bolivian soya.
Lima has also just signed a trade agreement with Washington that will have an adverse impact on Bolivian exports to Peru. These accords have ruptured the 37-year-old Andean Community of Nations, a trade pact that included Venezuela and Ecuador as well as Bolivia. Chávez announced in April that Venezuela was withdrawing from the pact because the US had "fatally wounded" the community. Morales has said that Bolivia is reconsidering its membership.
The discontent with the Andean community led to the signing of the people's trade agreement between Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia on April 29. The accord is particularly favourable to Bolivia, as Cuba and Venezuela have agreed to take all of Bolivia's soya production as well as other agricultural commodities at market prices or better. Venezuela will also ship oil to Bolivia to meet domestic shortfalls in production, while Cuba will send doctors.
The trade agreement and Bolivia's nationalisation mark a dramatic shift in hemispheric affairs. Morales is serving notice on Washington that he is becoming part of a radical bloc of nations in Latin America that are no longer subservient to the US.
· Roger Burbach is director of the Centre for the Study of the Americas, based in Berkeley, California. He is the co-author, with Jim Tarbell, of Imperial Overstretch: George W Bush and the Hubris of Empire. This article first appeared on www.redress.btinternet.co.uk
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source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...769857,00.html
you cant even start to talk about this unless you understand the contexts that shape it.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
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