For those who missed it, journalist Jeremy Bigwood's speech posted on Magbana's journal,

in which he revealed information US progressives need to know, from the _Bush years, regarding how they viewed Bolivia and its actual citizens.

magbana's Journal


Jeremy Bigwood, US Investigative Reporter, Reveals Truth of US Intervention in Bolivia

Posted by magbana in Latin America
Sat Oct 11th 2008, 02:26 PM

PRESS RELEASE CONTACT: JEREMY BIGWOOD

Tel: Saturday in La Paz: 73049561 Monday in US: 202-319-9150

OCTOBER 11, 2008 LA PAZ, BOLIVIA

Jeremy is a longtime investigative reporter and has been particularly successful at getting info out of the US gov't. through FOIA requests. He collaborated with Eva Golinger in getting important info in response to his requests for Golinger's book, "The Chavez Code."

Visit his site, to view recently acquired docs on Bolivia at Bolivia Matters, http://boliviamatters.wordpress.com /

magbana

US INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST JEREMY BIGWOOD

REVEALS PROOF OF US INTERVENTION IN THE INTERNAL AFFAIRS OF BOLIVIA

October 11, 2008 - This morning at a press conference in La Paz, American photo and investigative journalist, Jeremy Bigwood, revealed new documents uncovered through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other sources that show clear US government interference in Bolivia´s internal affairs.

Of the seven original documents shown during the press conference, and available online at the reporters blog as of 11am this morning: http://boliviamatters.wordpress.com / Mr. Bigwood made reference to two documents that showed clear intent on the part of the US government and its international development agencies to weaken Bolivia's President Evo Morales' MAS political party and foster opposition to the current government.

At the Radisson Hotel in La Paz, where the press conference was held, the American journalist presented a leaked internal email between USAID employees working in Bolivia. According to Bigwood, the email showed that "former Ambassador Philip Goldberg worked through various US government entities, including United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in an attempt to cultivate opposition and in at least one case to attempt to provide support to create indigenous organizations to confront the MAS party and Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales."

Journalists who attended the press conference received copies of the original documents uncovered by Mr. Bigwood and had the opportunity to ask questions following his presentation. As this is an ongoing investigation, Mr. Bigwood also provided information on where soon to be revealed information could be found over the coming months and cited his blog on Bolivia.

Immediately following the press conference today, Mr. Bigwood will be available for interviews by phone in La Paz and on Monday by phone in Washington DC. He will not be available for comment on Sunday. (See telephone numbers above for interviews.)

Peru now has a ‘licence to kill’ environmental protesters

Peru now has a ‘licence to kill’ environmental protesters

Law exempts soldiers and police from criminal responsibility if they cause injuries or deaths

Some of the recent media coverage about the fact that more than 50 people in Peru – the vast majority of them indigenous – are on trial following protests and fatal conflict in the Amazon over five years ago missed a crucial point. Yes, the hearings are finally going ahead and the charges are widely held to be trumped-up, but what about the government functionaries who apparently gave the riot police the order to attack the protestors, the police themselves, and – following Wikileaks’ revelations of cables in which the US ambassador in Lima criticized the Peruvian government’s “reluctance to use force” and wrote there could be “implications for the recently implemented Peru-US FTA” if the protests continued – the role of the US government?

The conflict broke out in northern Peru after mainly indigenous Awajúns and Wampis had been peacefully protesting a series of new laws which were supposedly emitted to comply with a trade agreement between Peru and the US and which made it easier, among other things, for extractive industries to exploit natural resources in their territories. Following a blockade of a highway near a town called Bagua – and an agreement that the protestors would break up and go home, reached the day before – early on 5 June the police moved to clear it and started shooting. In the ensuing conflict, 10 police officers, five indigenous people and five non-indigenous civilians were killed, more than 200 injured – at least 80 of whom were shot – and, elsewhere in the Bagua region, a further 11 police officers were killed after being taken hostage.

“So far only protesters have been brought to trial,” said Amnesty International in a statement marking five years since the conflict and pointing out that human rights lawyers have said there is no serious evidence linking the accused to the crimes they are being prosecuted for – which include homicide and rebellion. “[S]o far little progress has been made to determine the responsibility of the security forces. Likewise, no progress has been made to investigate the political authorities who gave the orders to launch the police operation.”

Does this desperate failure of justice not effectively constitute a “licence to kill” for the police? Maybe, maybe not, but whatever the answer Peru has now formalised that licence by emitting a law that, as the Dublin-based NGO Front Line Defenders (FLD) puts it, grants:

. . . members of the armed forces and the national police exemption from criminal responsibility if they cause injury or death, including through the use of guns or other weapons, while on duty. Human rights groups, both nationally and internationally, the Human Rights Ombudsman (Defensoria del Pueblo) as well as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights all expressed deep concern about the law. In the words of the [Lima-based] Instituto Libertad y Democracia [IDL], the law equates, in practice, to a “licence to kill.”

The Fight to Ban Gold Mining and Save El Salvador's Water Supply

The Fight to Ban Gold Mining and Save El Salvador's Water Supply
Sunday, 29 June 2014 10:52
By Julia Paley, Foreign Policy in Focus | Report and Video

Gold-digging multinationals are fueling political violence and environmental devastation in El Salvador, but communities are fighting back.

“For us, the mine is death.”

Those words, spoken by the president of a rural grassroots organization, capture the intensity and urgency of the struggle against mining in El Salvador.

Mining has reaped devastating consequences in El Salvador. Toxins from mining operations have made 90 percent of El Salvador’s water undrinkable. Lung and kidney diseases run rampant among miners. Community leaders and activists who resist are hounded and cut down.

The 15-minute documentary Gold or Water: The Struggle Against Metallic Mining in El Salvador dramatically illustrates Salvadorans’ passionate efforts to ward off mining from aggressive multinational firms. You can watch it in full here:

Puerto Castilla, Honduras: Corporate and Military Interests Above Garífuna Community

Puerto Castilla, Honduras: Corporate and Military Interests Above Garífuna Community

Written by Greg McCain
Wednesday, 25 June 2014 09:10



Six children from the community of Puerto Castilla, Trujillo, suffered severe respiratory damage resulting from an attack carried out on May 23, 2014 by the Honduran National Police, Military Police, and in conjunction with the Operation Xatruch III military unit. Hundreds of tear gas canisters were fired into the community in a haphazard manner as a means of dispersing a peaceful protest. After inundating the town with tear gas, the roughly 500 security force members entered the community, dousing anyone within reach with pepper spray.

Tear gas canisters landed in the yard of the kindergarten and the Colegio 14 de agosto, the local high school. The wind pushed concentrated levels of the gas into the classrooms. Younger students were foaming at the mouth and convulsing as they gasped for air.Canisters landed at doorsteps and windows of houses and businesses, which also filled with the noxious fumes. No one in the town could escape the irritant laden clouds. A cat, hit by one of the intensely hot canisters, has a permanent scar the size of a nickel on its head. The clouds of tear gas and pepper spray covered the entire town to the extent that many of the children had to be evacuated by small fishing boats out to the Bay of Trujillo. After a week, many of the children and adults still suffered nasal irritation and severe coughs while the four still hospitalized, one as young a six months old, continued to suffer headaches, vomiting, asthma like symptoms, and emotional trauma.

According to the Material Safety Data Sheet supplied to OSHA by a manufacturer of the gas,

Overexposure to some of the components (such as to people in a confined space) has been found to cause liver abnormalities and kidney damage in laboratory animals. Vapors can cause headache and nausea... Medical Conditions Generally Aggravated by Exposure: May put persons with pre-existing heart disease at risk. Vapors released at high concentrations may have an asthmatic effect and will displace air in confined spaces.

CS (teargas) is a cyanide compound and when it is metabolized, cyanide can be detected in human tissue. Also, when exposed to fire, cyanide compounds are undoubtedly released... According to the United States Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, CS emits “very toxic fumes” when heated to decomposition, and at specified concentrations CS gas is an immediate danger to life and health.

The National Port Authority is a decentralized institution of the Government of the Republic ... Our goal is to create leading market positions in order to establish and develop investment projects in the short, medium and long term to provide port services and profitability by offering our customers very competitive flexible rates to allow us to compete in a global economy.

Missed this last year.Time to fix my error:Revolutionary Indigenous Leader Assassinated in Venezuela

Revolutionary Indigenous Leader Assassinated in Venezuela

March 4, 2013

‘A powerful visionary, a talented leader and a passionate voice in the Indigenous land struggle’

By Emelie Rosenblatt



Cacique Sabino Romero

Yukpa Indigenous leader Cacique Sabino Romero has been brutally assassinated in Zulia, Venezuela, near the Colombian border. An emblematic leader in the struggle for Indigenous land rights, Cacique Sabino had survived nearly a decade of death threats and assassination attempts on behalf of the elite landowners, whose largely vacant pastures he fought to reclaim for the Yukpa people, succeeding in no fewer than 14 land takeovers.

On the night of March 3, two gunmen on motorcycles, suspected to have been hired by the landowners, ambushed Cacique Sabino and his wife as they walked along a rural highway in Zulia on their way to vote in Yukpa tribal elections. The masked gunmen assassinated Sabino, and his wife suffered injuries during the shooting.
Thousands of Venezuelans poured into the streets the next day to demand justice for those responsible for the attack. The United Socialist Party (PSUV) administration has launched a full-scale investigation into the assassination.

For nearly a decade, Cacique Sabino’s efforts to take back Yukpa lands for communal ownership drew attention throughout Latin America and around the world. In particular, his leadership during the Yukpa occupation of the Chaktapa estates in 2009 brought global recognition to the struggles of Indigenous Venezuelans to reclaim ancestral lands that had belonged to them as recently as the 1980s. In response to the Yukpa movement, several elite landowners hired mercenary assassins who made ceaseless attempts on Sabino’s life, including a ruthless attack on his family’s home that resulted in the death of his elderly father.

On surviving another assassination attempt in 2012, Cacique Sabino told the media: “The cattle ranchers and landowners threaten me because they don’t want to leave our land. They’ve persecuted me because I’m strong. The other strong Caciques are already dead. I’m not strong to fight with the force of the bullet, but with the force of words.” Five Yukpa leaders close to Sabino had been assassinated in a two-month period earlier that year.

In a televised speech in 2008, President Hugo Chávez praised Cacique Sabino’s work on behalf of the Yukpa and all Indigenous peoples. Chávez reaffirmed the Venezuelan government’s commitment to supporting their struggle, stating, “There should be no doubt that, between the hacienda owners and the Indigenous people, this government stands with the Indigenous.” Addressing a crowd that broke into a thunderous applause, President Chávez continued: “Justice for the Indians! Land for the Indians!”

More:
http://earthwarriorsrising.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/revolutionary-indigenous-leader-assassinated-in-venezuela/

Rest in Peace, Cacique Sabino Romero.

Behind Washington’s War on Cuba

Behind Washington’s War on Cuba

by Mateo Pimentel / June 27th, 2014


The US does not celebrate or even welcome the independence of other nations; it only countenances servitude. Indeed, the nation that wins its sovereignty—only to prostitute its resources for the sake of American empire—is the nation that gets the green light from Washington. Yet, if America does not receive a warm, economic, post-independence welcome, its war hawks invariably circle. Sometimes they circle anyway! Then bombs drop. Or, embargos facilitate economic terrorism. Pick a country, any country. This blueprint gets redrawn everywhere, and this is precisely the protocol, the behavioral norm, for maintaining global hegemony 90 miles off the coast of Florida.

Despite the perpetual propagation of its oppressive, hegemonic antagonism around the globe, even a looming specter as carcinogenic as American empire cannot shore-up every possibility of a long-lived rogue power it might enterprise to relegate to the margins of global economy. Cuba, for centuries, has been quite the fly in America’s imperial ointment, and thus, a champion to oppressed peoples everywhere. This has especially been true in the last half-century. Cuba shamed Washington with its revolution some fifty years ago, warring against US-sponsored terrorism and oppression. But the saga is not over. Because Cuba threw off the yoke of subjugation in 1959, US aggression continues to seek retribution for its inability to indenture Cuba to this day.

Almost two centuries ago, the architects of US statecraft envisaged a sphere of influence whereby the entire American hemisphere submitted to total US domination. They named it the “American System.” John Quincy Adams, for one, specifically asserted Cuba’s preordained indenture to the US. He claimed there were “laws of political as well as of physical gravitation” that affected Cuba the same way that gravity pulls on an “apple severed from a tree.” Adams further predicted Cuba would be “incapable of self-support,” thus justifying US interest and its savage agenda there. The US then conquered half of Mexico in 1848, acquiring Cuba roughly fifty years later. It is perhaps no coincidence that these annexations took place within but a generation of Adam’s presidency. As further evidence of imperialist tendencies, the seizures of Mexican and Cuban property rested largely on the unbending belief that the US had not only the ability and the authority, but also the burden of determining economic and political order in ‘its’ hemisphere.

In one of his most famous chapters, entitled “A Revolution Begins,” Ernesto “Che” Guevara, a most integral spoke in the Cuban revolutionary wheel, cited Adams in his own apologies for the historic events that took place in Cuba in the mid-to-late 1950s. Che noted how the reasons for Cuba’s revolution extend much further back in history, before Sumner Welles in 1933, before the 1901 Platt Amendment—all the way back to Narciso López, direct envoy of the US annexationists. Writes Che, “These are all links in a long chain of continental aggression that has not been aimed solely at Cuba.” Many years before the probability of Che’s leadership in Cuba’s 1959 Revolution would become a certainty, Simón Bolívar echoed similar sentiments gathered through his experience as a liberator in his own right. He noted how the United States appeared “to be determined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.” No doubt he spoke of the US species of “liberty” sardonically. It would appear there was nothing new under the imperial sun for Cuba in the 50s.

More:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/06/behind-washingtons-war-on-cuba/

In defense of Bolivian President Evo Morales

In defense of Bolivian President Evo Morales

Morales has been accused of being a fake radical. But he's actually made some bold reforms.

By Ryan Cooper | June 27, 2014



I
n what has been billed as an anti-colonial protest, the Bolivian government of President Evo Morales has changed the direction of the clock hands on the Congress building in La Paz. It will now go widdershins.

Max Fisher takes this somewhat silly gesture as more evidence that Morales is a charlatan:

Nothing says "Bolivian President Evo Morales" like a radically leftist but ultimately inconsequential government policy, but the South American leader may have veered a bit into self-caricature with his latest. The big clock on top of the capital city's Congress building has been reversed...this makes no actual difference other than to confuse people in the Bolivian capital of La Paz who want to know what time it is. {Vox}

Is Evo Morales a fake radical? Fisher is right that his policies have been pretty moderate overall, and certainly Latin America (just like the United States) has not lacked for strutting, stuffed-shirt presidents. But if we put him in the context of two centuries of a power-drunk, swaggering U.S. repeatedly laying waste to nations all across Latin America, and fully consider his coca policy, things look much different.

The United States has a gruesome history when it comes to Latin America. There was the time we stole half of Mexico. And the time some guy, with the enthusiastic support of many American elites, repeatedly tried to take over Nicaragua and to install himself at the head of a slavery-based dictatorship. And the time we toppled the democratically elected government of Guatemala and installed a right wing dictatorship, largely to protect the profits of the United Fruit Company (a common theme in the earlier Banana Wars), ushering in a 36-year genocidal civil war in which U.S.-backed military regimes massacred something like 200,000 people. (I could go on, and on, and on.)

Indeed, President Morales has experienced first-hand what happens if you catch the attention of the U.S. when it’s in a bad mood, as Fisher himself explains:

Earlier this month, he called for the abolition of the United Nations Security Council, to help bring "the destruction of world hierarchies" and begin healing "mother Earth." He frequently defies and denounces Western governments, for example in July, when his plane was grounded in Austria and searched for NSA leaker Edward Snowden. {Vox}

Brazilian officials warn of “imminent” death of uncontacted Indians

Brazilian officials warn of “imminent” death of Indians
Saturday, 28 June 2014, 10:32 am
Press Release: Survival International
June 26, 2014

Brazilian officials warn of “imminent” death of uncontacted Indians

Brazilian officials have warned that uncontacted Indians face imminent “tragedy” and "death" after a dramatic increase in the number of sightings in the Amazon rainforest near the Peru border.

Experts believe that the Indians have fled over the border from Peru in a bid to escape waves of illegal loggers invading their territory. They are now entering the territory of other isolated Indian groups already living on the Brazil side – and some settled communities.

Ashaninka Indians in Acre state, Brazil, for example, say they recently encountered dozens of uncontacted Indians close to their community, and recent government investigations have revealed more frequent sightings of footprints, temporary camps and food remains left behind by the Indians.

These incidents are raising fears of violent clashes between the various groups, and decimation by contagious diseases to which the uncontacted Indians have no immunity.

More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1406/S00170/brazilian-officials-warn-of-imminent-death-of-indians.htm

Elbit: Exporting Oppression from Palestine to Latin America

Elbit: Exporting Oppression from Palestine to Latin America

by Scott Campbell / June 27th, 2014


Surveillance. It’s in the headlines and on the tips of tongues. As technology offers new possibilities for connection, it also offers new means to keep tabs on people. Surveillance has become seemingly ubiquitous, from the NSA reading emails to drones in the skies. As a nation that has for 66 years been ruling over an indigenous population by force, one of the main countries practicing surveillance is Israel. And it is the Israeli defense industry that has been reaping the profits off of the oppression and surveillance of the Palestinian people.

One of the top occupation profiteers in Israel is the defense firm Elbit Systems. The largest non-governmental defense company in the country, its revenue stood at $2.83 billion in 2010. Using knowledge and expertise gained from assisting in the occupation of Palestine, Elbit has made millions exporting surveillance and defense materiel worldwide – and increasingly so to Latin America. While Israel’s role in arming dictators and oppressive regimes in Latin America during the last century is well known, Elbit is at the forefront of a new wave of Israeli arms industry involvement in countries in the region. Elbit has a presence in at least five Latin American countries, as well as along the US-Mexico border. Far from being benign, the application of its technology should raise concern among those working for human rights in the area.

Elbit in Latin America

In 2008, Mexico acquired two Elbit Hermes 450 drones and one Skylark drone for $25 million. This capability was expanded when in 2012, the government purchased two Hermes 900 drones for $50 million. The Hermes drones can be armed or unarmed and are believed to be in the hands of the Mexican Federal Police. While ostensibly to be used against drug trafficking cartels, since the election of Enrique Peña Nieto, the Mexican state has increased its repression of both social movements and migrants from South and Central America making their way to the US. Using drones to monitor the jungles of Chiapas in a search for Zapatistas or to keep watch over demonstrations in Mexico City does not seem out of the question.

The Colombian Air Force in 2013 acknowledged it was acquiring one Hermes 900 and one Hermes 450. As Colombia’s biggest war is an internal one, surely these will be used in its counterinsurgency efforts against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Army of National Liberation (ELN). Should the peace talks not pan out, the Hermes has multiple payload configurations which may be deployed.

More:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/06/elbit-exporting-oppression-from-palestine-to-latin-america/

Red Bull settles with U.S. on Cuba violations claims

Source: CNN Money

By Patrick M. Sheridan

Red Bull settles with U.S. on Cuba violations claims

Company traveled to Cuba to film documentary in 2009

UPDATED 9:24 PM MDT Jun 27, 2014

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) —Energy drink maker Red Bull North America has settled claims that it broke rules involving sanctions against Cuba.

The Treasury Department said Friday that the company has agreed to pay $89,775 over allegations it failed to get authorization from the Treasury to travel to Cuba in 2009.

The more than half-century old U.S. boycott of Cuba strictly prohibits businesses from visiting the island without first obtaining a license.

The Treasury says that between June 8 and June 18, 2009, seven representatives of Red Bull North America traveled to Cuba in order to film a documentary, without first obtaining approval.

Read more: http://www.koat.com/project-economy/Red-Bull-settles-with-U-S-on-Cuba-violations-claims/26697310#ixzz35ty99HW0