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like they have been stoking the civil war in Colombia. They must be stopped. This is "School of the Americas" 101: divide and conquer.
The white separatists in Bolivia are much like the rightwing opposition in Venezuela--greedy, selfish bastards who care nothing for their country or the welfare of its people. Like the Venezuelan rightwing, they have enriched themselves and neglected every social decency for the poor--schools, medical care, basic workers' rights--as well as basic infrastructure development, economic diversification and national security issues like food self-sufficiency. The Bushites--who are funding, arming and organizing them--have geopolitical goals, beyond greed. They want power over Bolivia and its allies, to steal the resources, and to dominate the continent. Therefore it might be possible to bribe the white separatists with, say, an unfair share of gas, oil and other profits, as a temporary measure to prevent a hot civil war, which the Bushites very much want. In short, my judgment of them is that they can be bought. It is also important to deny the Bushites any secure strategic ground, such as they have established in Colombia with $5.5 BILLION in U.S. (taxpayer) military aid, which enables them to use Colombia as any easy tool for Bushite policy, including harrying Venezuela's and Ecuador's borders, trying to instigate a war, organizing assassination plots against leftist leaders in these countries, drugs/weapons profiteering and other awfulness. The Bushites are LOSING strategic ground. Paraguay went leftist with the election last weekend. So much for their plan to create a fascist enclave at the southern end of the Bolivarian revolution, by combining eastern Bolivia with the portion of Paraguay that borders it (and that includes a U.S. air base, and possibly a Bush Cartel 100,000 acre land purchase on Paraguay's important aquifer). The new president of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, will oppose Buhiste interference with Paraguay's neighbor, Bolivia, and has said that he wants the U.S. air base out of Paraguay.
The Bushites are on the run. That is WHY they are supporting these white separatists. But a Bushite state in eastern Bolivia will have NO friendly neighbors--Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and now, Paraguay as well, and, of course, the central Bolivian government of Evo Morales, are all leftists, all oppose U.S. interference, all despise Bushites. No one will trade with them. They are land-locked. They will be pariahs throughout the continent. And because of this, and because of their innate character, they probably can be bought off, so that, as time goes on, the Morales government and future governments can work on better integrating the eastern provinces (including racial integration).
But a hot war must be avoided in the meantime. And it will be a major test of the OAS--which is now dominated by the left and by pro-democracy progressives--whether it can prevent one. The Rio Group (which includes all Latin American countries, but excludes the U.S.) was good at resolving the mess that the Bushites created by the U.S./Colombia bombing/incursion against Ecuador, but I don't think it has the institutional diplomatic capability of the OAS (which has to work around the Bush Junta/U.S.). It is more a talking group--for disputes between Latin American countries (but not within them). The OAS is also the chief monitor and arbiter of elections in Latin America, and a lot hinges on that, in this case. The white separatists are holding an illegal referendum, one that was forbidden by the Bolivian Electoral Court. The OAS election monitors will not be participating in it--nor any other election monitors that I know of. I don't imagine that any election monitoring group would want to be tainted with this. The white separatists have no authority to hold this vote, no authority to invite election monitors into the country, and probably have no interest in doing so, because they want to bully and suppress the indigenous voters.
I read somewhere that the Catholic bishops were trying to mediate the dispute. I imagine that Fernando Lugo (who is a former bishop) has a great interest in seeing it resolved. His new administration doesn't need the split-up of neighbor Bolivia as a headache, and Paraguayan security would be gravely threatened by a Bushite-supported, rogue fascist state right next door. He has enough to worry about. He does not have a strong leftist mandate (such as those that the governments of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina have received). He ran for president in a multi-candidate race, and won about 40% of the vote--a good win, but not overwhelming. He has first of all to hold his coalition together (a fractious group of small parties), and get reform started in Paraguay. He needs PEACE. He is not the socialist firebrand that the other leftist leaders in the region are. So many he can talk to the white separatists, and ease them away from their ill-intentioned Bushite mentors.
The Bushites plan for Oil War II: South America is hanging in the balance. If they fail to get this war going in Bolivia, it's pretty much all over for them (except for biofuel production--the next phase of the oil wars). Their main ally, Colombia, is already isolated and despised. Their half-ally Peru, where corrupt "free traders" are in charge, could easily go leftist in the next election cycle. Then the Bushites and their global corporate predator puppetmasters will have nobody to play with, except for the mass murderers and drugs/weapons traffickers running Colombia. Chile and Brazil have made some "free trade" compromises, but generally they are anti-Bush, and line up with the Bolivarians on important issues like the sovereignty of South American countries, and the need for South American self-determination. Brazil's president is a particular friend and defender of Hugo Chavez. Chile's president was tortured during the U.S.-supported Pinochet junta, and lost family members to that CIA-installed shit-head, and wouldn't want to see all that happen again, anywhere in South America.
The issue of biofuel production is a big one. Brazil's president made a deal with Bush about that--to the consternation and outrage of many leftist groups, including the massive campesino movement (small peasant farmers), environmental groups and the Bolivarians. One of the Bushites' interests in their client state of Colombia is biofuel production. The military aid they've given to Colombia is in part to drive peasant farmers and unionized workers from the land--to clear it for Monsanto and other big agricultural predators. They want the last of the oil in the western hempishere--which is almost all in Venezuela and Ecuador (both members of OPEC, and both with leftist governments), with some reserves in Bolivia, and new finds in Argentina and Brazil. And after that they want other resources (water, gas, minerals, forests), the land and political domination.
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