http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4534332.stm

Yes!

Cocaine is bad, m'kay? Giving the United States a good but extremely shaky and probably illegal reason to invade (openly or covertly) is not a good thing to do, regardless of the administration in office. There's still a War on Drugs going on and this guy's little threat will not be received well by its proponents.



Edited: Bloody hell...

reason to invade (openly or covertly) check out the DSM. If the USA has a problem with COKE let the USA deal with it. If Bolivia or any other country does not have a problem with it they do not need to have one. Let the Bushit crew go after the poppies in Afghanistan if they want something to do.

The United States military has been more or less destroyed by the Bush administration and is in no position to recover.

Moreover, the United States finances itself with a credit card. Too much more bad behavior and that credit card will be cut off.

I believe that the enthusiasm for international defiance of the US will be growing powerfully in the next several years.

One need not be in favor of cocaine to recognize that the US is increasingly powerless to do anything about nations that don't dance to the tune of Yankee Doodle.

Yes to what? More coke? Yeah Latin America is changing, but Bolivia is changing in the wrong way from what this article says.

Morales knows it's bullshit. I've read about where the money we send down their to fight the war on drugs goes, and it turns my stomach. It's just another excuse we use to meddle in their affairs.

The US has been against socialist states since 1912 and has actively interfered in LA in the past. The US population "must not see what good goes on down there."

She had not many good things to say about Chavez, but then again she is an attorney, so her family probably wasn't starving in the ghetto or anything. It seems like Latin America has a terrible caste thing going... the poor in those countries are despised and neglected.

Just not many of them know it because they all think they are rich.

a fetus is a fetus.

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=259047&area=/insight/insight__international/

High up on the Bolivian altiplano near Lake Titicaca, an Aymara priest holds a green plastic lighter to a carved wooden cup containing strips of paper. Despite the fierce gusts of the early morning wind, the paper catches and smoke billows forth. The priest, dressed in traditional, brightly coloured robes, holds the smoking vessel before the presidential candidate.

“We have lost perhaps 500 years,’’ says the priest. “Mother moon, mother Earth, we ask you in this place to support us.’’ The candidate, smoke blowing in his face, looks deferential.

It is a symbolic moment in an extra-ordinary campaign that has seen this impoverished country of nine million take faltering steps towards recovering control of its destiny. Wracked by unrest, external interference, the International Monetary Fund and a corrupt elite, Bolivia faces an election on December 18 that could see the ascension of Latin America’s first wholly indigenous leader.

<snip>

The Aymara ceremony is repeated two hours later at the sacred archaeological site of Tiahuanaco. It ends with trinkets being set on fire as an offering to the Earth. The trinkets are topped by two llama foetuses on skewers. The priest offers the congregation and the eager media coca leaves to chew.

more...

Dark Armies, Secret Bases, and Rummy

by Conn Hallinan

November 24, 2005

Foreign Policy In Focus - 2005-11-21



It would be easy to make fun of President Bush's recent fiasco at the 4th Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina. His grand plan for a free trade zone reaching from the Artic Circle to Tierra del Fuego was soundly rejected by nations fed up with the economic and social chaos wrought by neoliberalism. At a press conference, South American journalists asked him rude questions about Karl Rove. And the President ended the whole debacle by uttering what may be the most trenchant observation the man has ever made on Latin America: “Wow! Brazil is big!”


But there is nothing amusing about an enormous U.S. base less than 120 miles from the Bolivian border, or the explosive growth of U.S.-financed mercenary armies that are doing everything from training the military in Paraguay and Ecuador to calling in air attacks against guerillas in Colombia. Indeed, it is feeling a little like the run up to the ‘60s and ‘70s, when Washington-sponsored military dictatorships dominated most of the continent, and dark armies ruled the night.


U.S. Special Forces began arriving this past summer at Paraguay's Mariscal Estigarribia air base, a sprawling complex built in 1982 during the reign of dictator Alfredo Stroessner. Argentinean journalists who got a peek at the place say the airfield can handle B-52 bombers and Galaxy C-5 cargo planes. It also has a huge radar system, vast hangers, and can house up to 16,000 troops. The air base is larger than the international airport at the capital city, Asuncion .


Some 500 special forces arrived July 1 for a three-month counterterrorism training exercise, code named Operation Commando Force 6.

<snip>

The base is crawling with U.S. civilians—many of them retired military—working for Military Professional Resources Inc., Virginia Electronics, DynCorp, Lockheed Martin (the world's largest arms maker), Northrop Grumman, TRW, and dozens of others.


It was U.S. intelligence agents working out of Manta who fingered Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia leader Ricardo Palmera last year, and several leaders of the U.S.-supported coup against Haitian President Bertram Aristide spent several months there before launching the 2004 coup that exiled Aristide to South Africa.


“Privatizing” war is not only the logical extension of the Bush administration's mania for contracting everything out to the private sector; it also shields the White House's activities from the U.S. Congress. “My complaint about the use of private contractors,” says U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsy (D-IL), “is their ability to fly under the radar to avoid accountability.”

<more>

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=HAL20051124&articleId=1322