Today's Press Briefing October 3, 2000 Banzer's Titanic is Sinking Plot to Divide Bolivian Social Movements Fails General Strike Could Begin Thursday -- The War on Drugs Meets its Waterloo in Bolivia -- http://www.narconews.com/pressbriefing.html (NOTE: THIS IS THE FIRST OF A SERIES OF BREAKING NEWS REPORTS THAT SHALL BE POSTED TO OUR PRESS BRIEFING PAGE THROUGHOUT THE DAY. NEXT UPDATE WITHIN AN HOUR.) The historic drama unfolding in the South American nation of Bolivia deserves the attention and support of all Am�rica. It is there that Bol�var's dream is awakening. The impact on the hemisphere, indeed the world, will be felt for years to come. History is knocking on Am�rica's door once again. But where is the US media? Where are its correspondents, special reporters, camera crews and helicopters? The United States press corps has made a profound error in believing those -- from the US State Department to the Associated Press organization -- who have signaled, blindly and incorrectly, that the social revolt in Bolivia will be quelled by their troops in La Paz, above all, by the dictator- turned-"president" Hugo Banzer. Let history take note of the words of yet another "unnamed State Department source" quoted by Marcela Sanchez of the Washington post last week: --- A senior State Department official, who asked not to be named, recognized the current problem in Bolivia but didn't think it is "all that terrible." "We have full confidence President [Hugo] Banzer and his government will get through this," he added. The official indicated that he sympathized with the coca growers but added that "We cannot forget that what they are doing is illegal." --- Let history also note what could and should be the final report from the "cacique journalist" Peter McFarren of the Associated Press in La Paz, when against all factual record, he wrote this past weekend that the movement is based on "anti-white sentiment." Narco News vows: This will be the last unchecked lie by Mr. McFarren, who has no business posing as a journalist when his multi-million dollar empire in Bolivia is among the powers of the corrupted status quo that seek, desperately, to quell a revolt that will not be stopped. Coming this week on Narco News: The Untold Story of AP's Peter McFarren. The Banzer-McFarren-Washington strategy had been to divide the social movements: to treat the striking teachers, the water warriors, the coca-growers, the unions and the regional movements as they are treated inside the United States: as "interest groups." They tried to buy off the teachers and other groups and isolate the coca-growers leadership to justify the final bloody solution. Indeed, this beast in its death throes could lash out against the Bolivian people with brutal violence at any moment. But what Power forgot is that, even in this 21st century, there exists the human spirit, "national conscience," the moral of solidarity, all the values that Power and its mediated armies have tried to stamp out in its thirst to "globalize" the planet under economic dominion with the drug war as its sword. In recent days, the Banzer government made surgical concessions to various fronts in the movement in its attempt to isolate and ready the coca-growers for destruction. It signed an agreement with the rural teachers union leaders to give them more money. It pledged to respect the April agreements on water policy that it had already broken. It feigned a "suspension" of construction of three new military bases in the Chapare region in an attempt to calm the local public outrage. And Washington's lips did not even move in its ventriloquy when Banzer announced: The coca crop will be totally eradicated, even that which produces coca leaf -- and not cocaine -- for safe peasant consumption. All the players were in place to crush the movement. And with no other major media present, AP's McFarren was set to control the English-language spin, to dress up even massacres in the perfume of an "anti-drug" victory. Power's maneuver, however, did not go as planned. The 80,000 striking urban teachers condemned the rural teachers leadership for selling out the movement. The 50,000 rural teachers followed by condemning their own leaders and refusing to go along with the deal. They, and the popular movements to preserve Bolivia's water supplies, announced that there will be no solution until the demands by all the movement's sectors, including the coca-growers, are resolved. The coca-growers and peasants continued the blockades that paralyze the nation and its commerce. The urban populations in La Paz and elsewhere took to the streets yesterday and were repelled by the tear- gasses of the regime. And then Banzer made his final error. His Air Force had been working overtime to fly food into the capital of La Paz and other cities: road access is already a distant memory. But the food did not go to the popular markets, which are empty. Instead, what food is available has been channeled to the Five Star Hotels, the expensive Supermarkets and the walled neighborhoods of the wealthy. The great majority of Bolivia's urban population, until now sympathetic to the social demands in the country but unmobilized and irritated by the shortages of basic products, has now seen what the entire regime is based upon: The protection, at all costs, of the super wealthy class and the US-imposed drug policy that keeps the poor and the worker down. If there is any doubt that all this madness has at its root the US- imposed war on drugs, the report we publish today from correspondent Jim Shultz in Cochabamba, Bolivia, makes clear that this fact is beyond doubt: http://www.narconews.com/boliviabrief.html The US-backed regime of Banzer in Bolivia has attempted, through trickery and media manipulation, to divide and conquer the social movements. And yet it has only made them stronger, more united, and ready. Coca-growers leader Evo Morales yesterday sounded the battle cry: "Coca or Blood." All popular sectors are now moving against the Banzer regime, now joined by the urban workers to the middle class. The professional association of market shopkeepers has just delivered the final warning: Meet the social demands of all the sectors, or Thursday they will shut down the markets. In other words; General Strike. The passengers of Banzer's Titanic will not go down without a fight. The drug war is, by definition, Titanic as policy: a ship that saves only a few and damns the many. Do not turn your eyes from the great shaking events of this moment. The 21st Century begins with a bang from below. The US-imposed War on Drugs meets its Waterloo on the high plains of Bolivia. Right here, right now, history is in the making. ...from somewhere in a country called Am�rica, Al Giordano Publisher The Narco News Bulletin http://www.narconews.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Next Report by 2:30 p.m. EST To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
