El Gaviero

People that have never been to Bolivia, let alone observed an election there, are perpetuating the myth that Morales’s MAS party will accompany voters to the polls to ensure that they vote appropriately in today’s election. As far as I am aware, this lie started out with Mary Anastasio O’Grady’s WSJ column last month, when [...]

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I stumbled over to Americablog after reading the Mex Files’s takedown of American exceptionalism in media (via IKN). I wanted to read more about Americablog’s John Aravosis’s support for the Honduran coup, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the top post was about Greg Craig, former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada’s lawyer, [...]

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Bina and the Dude come up on the same search.

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“Islamic Terror” is the catch-all phrase word that Washington invokes whenever it seeks to explain its hyper-aggressive military posture. The excellent Upside Down World looks into the latest manufactured outrage over Iran’s ties–both real and imagined–to various countries in South America. Currently, the continent’s not as reliant on the United States as it once was, [...]

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Old, old news, but it deserves a post: Ex-U.S. ambassador to Bolivia–and persona non-grata in that country–Philip Goldberg was nominated last month for the head position of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the U.S. State Department. Goldberg, if you remember, was caught meeting secretly with members of the Bolivian opposition in Santa Cruz [...]

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Imperium-fighter Noam Chomsky lent his weight to UNASUR’s meeting this Friday in Argentina to discuss the U.S.-Colombia agreement to allow seven U.S. military bases in Colombia. With the exception of Peru, South American nations are displeased at the prospect of such a strong U.S. military presence on the continent. Chomsky was in Venezuela to denounce [...]

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Hillary Clinton released a terse statement yesterday regarding Bolivia’s Independence Day:
On behalf of the Government of the United States and the American people, I extend my congratulations to the Bolivian people as they celebrate 184 years of independence. The United States and Bolivia have 161 years of bilateral relations, a long friendship based on mutual [...]

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Bolivian authorities discovered and destroyed four cocaine factories, and 170 kilos of cocaine, in Oruro department, according to La Razon. Nevertheless, ATPDEA trade preferences between Bolivia and the United States, which are dependent on Bolivia’s drug-fighting strategy, are still suspended–even though Bolivia’s drug interdiction forces have been shutting down drug factories left and right. Now [...]

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Disappointing news out of Washington: The Obama administration is standing by the previous administration’s decision to drop Bolivia from ATPDEA, which gave Bolivia preferential trade treatment in exchange for Bolivia’s drug interdiction. At issue is Bolivian president Morales’s refusal to conflate cocaine–which the country is fighting effectively–with coca.
Super sites IKN and Mex Files are posting [...]

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There’s been a coup in Honduras, with the military spiriting away Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, in pajamas, in the early morning hours on Sunday. At issue is a referendum scheduled for yesterday that would begin a long process to amend the Honduran constitution so that Zelaya could be re-elected. Although the referendum was non-binding, several [...]

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