-------------------------- eGroups Sponsor -------------------------~-~> <FONT COLOR="#000099">eGroups eLerts It's Easy. It's Fun. Best of All, it's Free! </FONT><A HREF="http://click.egroups.com/1/9067/3/_/_/_/970151207/"><B>Click Here!</B></A> ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> September 28, 2000 Today's Press Briefing Bolivia's Banzer Convenes Military to Stop Protests -- All Eyes Are On Perú but It's Bolivia that Is On the Verge -- Peasant Protesters Vow to Meet Repression "Bullet for Bullet" -- The Drug War Wrecks Democracy Again A Narco News Global Alert: http://www.narconews.com/pressbriefing.html For the first time in 18 years, Bolivian President Hugo Banzer has convened his high military council to plot the repression of a wave of citizen protest that engulfs that South American country. Bolivia's "democracy," always as fragile and in quotations as that of Perú, is on the verge of regressing back to the bad old days of military rule and repression. As a Narco News advisor pointed out to us: "Why am I suddenly reading the name of Perú spy chief Montesinos everywhere when during all the press coverage of the Spring elections he was barely mentioned?" Good question. Narco News offers the following answer: Washington is stage- managing a huge media circus around Montesinos and his jet-hopping from Peru to Panamá to distract from behind-the-scenes maneuvers throughout América. The total failure in the first weeks of the $1.3 billion dollar "Plan Colombia" military intervention is one of the stories that Washington wants to supress. As Congressional Democrats who were key in constructing the plan send messages that they might back away from it after the November elections, the US Ambassador to Colombia yesterday signed contracts with that government that commits the US funding into next year, stripping the next Congress from any power to stop the dollar hemorrhage. Not a mention of this in the English-language press; everyone is chasing Montesinos and President Alberto Fujimori, who is flying to Washington, DC for instructions as we write. The Perú-Panamá-Montesinos circus has pushed more than the fracasing Plan Colombia off the media docket. It has eclipsed the coming crisis in Bolivia, where the US has staked its South American gamble with a $4.5 billion dollar "Plan Bolivia" in exchange for Banzer's military cooperation with Plan Colombia and the fracasing war on drugs. The Pentagon needs Bolivia to escalate the Colombian war. Specifically, it needs airfields. $4.5 billion dollars worth of airfields! The US airbases in Manta, Ecuador, and San Salvador, El Salvador, are under increasing scrutiny and regulation by the congresses and opposition parties of those countries. Previous plans to use airfields in Chile to launch Colombia-bound warplanes went up in smoke with the election of former Allende minister Ricardo Lagos as President early this year. Madeleine Albright's recent negotiation with Argentina to use airfields there (under the euphemism of "logisticial support" for Plan Colombia) fell apart after one week: Brazil, Chile (and Europe?) made certain of that. From Venezuela the gallop of Bolívar's horse grows louder; a horsepower fueled by oil and the resurrection of OPEC and Venezuelan democracy together. The US military in South America increasingly resembles a homeless juvenile delinquent in the streets, armed with knives but not common sense, that belongs in reform school before he kills again. Not the Pentagon's School of the Americas (where Montesinos and at least one of the generals accompanying him to Panamá learned their terrorist skills), but, rather, the school of democracy, sovereignty and human rights in which the US State Department, the CIA, the DEA, and other agencies have failed every course. Just as Washington made its move on Banzer's Bolivia, the Bolivian people have risen up. A majority of the states in that nation are paralyzed from peasant blockades. What provoked them: The War on Drugs. The teachers of the nation are on strike: the students are busy anyway, fighting for their country and against their government. The Bolivian State has thrown the leader of the Teachers Union in jail, but the strike marches on. Washington has underestimated the rising conscience of Bolívar's América. Did they expect the Bolivian people to go along quietly with the New Colonial Plan? These times call for better analysis by authentic journalists and Civil Society. Don't be distracted by the hype. Washington is managing both Fujimori and his "opposition" in Perú, and still is losing its grip. That's because the events in Perú are shaped increasingly by the context provided by its neighbors. Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador... these are the places where Bolivar's dream of a united América is awakening. Fujimori, Montesinos and "opposition leader" Alejandro Toledo are ballerinas in the dance company of choreographers in Washington and Langley. The flash point that urgently needs more attention today is Bolivia. Spread the word across the world by Internet and every other means: The coming hours may decide whether Bolivia regresses back to military dictatorship, or the social movements surge forward to redraw the map on Our América. Bolivarianamente, Al Giordano Publisher The Narco News Bulletin http://www.narconews.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
