Thnks for this....such a movement is vitally needed at a National level...
I remain curious about the dynamics of the NDP...why has Singh tweted his concerns on the coup, yet nothing official from the NDP?
Has he been muzzled? Who are the forces behind this silence?
Obviously and self-evidently an explicit and official NDP position against an American-backed Bolivian regime-change operation is a bridge too far. A tweet from the leader is thought to be a safe 'progressive' sop for pro forma purposes and all they can manage. Hill & Knowlton socialism at work.
That MI-6 Takeover of The Guardian is Producing Some Grotesque Results
https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/1197254617739993088
"Morales' claim that he was ousted by an old-style military coup is not justified by the facts. Democracy is still working in Bolivia, just..."
NYT, WaPo, The Guardian? No wonder some babblers always end up going the wrong way.
There was maybe ONE person here who said anything vaguely pro-coup. Nobody here is "pro-Israel". And it's not progressive or anti-fascist to support Putin.
And quite frankly, NDPP, it's hard to see how you're ever going to win anybody over to whatever you want to win people over to by acting as if everyone else here is a reactionary sellout lackey or something. It's not possible to radicalize people by insulting them.
Is Canada complicit?
from Yves Engler...The Canadian Government also financed and promoted an OAS effort to discredit Boilivias´s presidential election...in a statement titled ´Canada welcomes results of the OAS electoral audit mission to Bolivia´
Freeland notyed ´Canadea commends the invaluable work of the OAS audit mission ensuring a fair and transparenT process, WHICH WE SUPPORTED FINANCIALLY AND THROUGH OUR EXPERTISE...
...WHAT EXPERTISE WAS THAT? HOW CAN WE FIND OUT?
Is Canada complicit?
from Yves Engler...The Canadian Government also financed and promoted an OAS effort to discredit Boilivias´s presidential election...in a statement titled ´Canada welcomes results of the OAS electoral audit mission to Bolivia´
Freeland notyed ´Canadea commends the invaluable work of the OAS audit mission ensuring a fair and transparenT process, WHICH WE SUPPORTED FINANCIALLY AND THROUGH OUR EXPERTISE...
...WHAT EXPERTISE WAS THAT? HOW CAN WE FIND OUT?
Singh and the NDP should be calling for an officially inquiry on that.
The OAS Lied about the Bolivian Election and Coup, Deliberately…
Global Research, November 21, 2019
Market Watch 19 November 2019
Bolivian Coup Was All About the Lithium & OAS had a Hand in It, Ousted President Morales Tells RT
"Bolivia's ousted president, Evo Morales, has told RT that the Organization of American States played a key role in deposing him, and that Bolivia's huge reserves of lithium had spurred on the coup. Morales was among a handfull of leftist leaders remaining in Latin America and, speaking to former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa on RT Spanish, he claimed that the OAS - a right-leaning bloc of states [including Canada] in the Americas based in Washington DC - had engineered his downfall..."
Medea Benjamin: 'They're Killing Us Like Dogs' - A Massacre in Bolivia and a Plea for Help
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/11/22/theyre-killing-us-dogs-mas...
"Writing this dispatch from Bolivia, the conflict here is spiraling out of control and I fear it will only get worse..."
Anyone seen anything anti-coup or pro-Morales from Svend Robinson yet? I may have missed it.
Anyone seen anything anti-coup or pro-Morales from Svend Robinson yet? I may have missed it.
He lost the election or did you miss that? WTF are you getting at.
I want to know who among Canadian politically progressive notables has declared for Morales and Bolivia?
I want to know who among Canadian politically progressive notables has declared for Morales and Bolivia?
Who the fuck do you think would bother interviewing him and if they did who would care? You are getting more bizarre by the day.
For the love of Simon Bolivar-you aren't seriously looking for reasons to call Svend, of all people, a sellout, are you? It goes without saying he's pro-Evo and anti-coup.Anyone seen anything anti-coup or pro-Morales from Svend Robinson yet? I may have missed it.
I made no such aspersion and would assume as you. I simply remarked I hadn't seen anything from him and wondered if anyone else had. Taking a roll call of prominent Canadian leftists, politicians or intellectuals as to their stand and statements on Bolivia is an obvious pre-requisite for organizing support. Especially when Canada has such dirty hands in it.
Bolivia: Practical Solidarity is Essential
https://labourhub.org.uk/2019/11/22/bolivia-practical-solidarity-is-esse...
"Evo Morales, the popular President of Bolivia, who had brought stability and growth to one of Latin America's poorest countries and was forced out by a military coup earlier this month, has called for a truth commission into the role of the Organisation of American States in October's presidential election. The OAS, which receives 60% of its funding from the US, had cast doubts on the preliminary election results, in what Bolivia's Vice President now claims was the start of an orchestrated coup..."
There should be an inquiry into Chrystia Freeland's and OAS member Canada's role in the Bolivian coup and a full mobilization of progressive Canadians to advance this inquiry and support the return of the illegitimately deposed Morales government.
I agree with the importance to have a public enquiry.
I plan to present the idea to the Union of BC Chiefs, with background information.
I plan to request friends to help access depositions from MAS leadership with respect to the OAS and Canada´s participation....suggestions as to the how and whom to preside...would be useful.....yes I too await statements from ´prominent´left spokespersons in Canada
Since people seem to want to know about thees kinds of things, here is a Statement signed by many academics.
Evo Morales – President of Bolivia from the MAS party (Movimiento al Socialismo, Movement Towards Socialism) – was forced to resign on November 10, in what many observers view as a coup. In the wake of Morales’ resignation, there has been mounting chaos and violence. What is happening in Bolivia is highly undemocratic and we are witnessing some of the worst human rights violations at the hands of the military and the police since the transition to civilian government in the early 1980s. We condemn the violence in the strongest terms, and call on the US and other foreign governments to immediately cease to recognize and provide any support to this regime. We urge the media to do more to document the mounting human rights abuses being committed by the Bolivian state.
...
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vKwFn_ujFW04AbfgC_kr94-2giTM1mdzq_RT...
An Open Letter To Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Bolivia From Canadian Writers and Scholars
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/25/an-open-letter-to-prime-minister...
"In fact of law, Evo Morales is the only true, legitimate president of Bolivia...Now is the moment for Canada to show that it truly respects and supports Indigenous peoples by openly and unequivocally condemning this coup..."
'Protest at 'The Guardian' Newspaper in London...'
https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1198854742451118080
"In its repulsive endorsement of the coup, the uniquely bad Guardian editorial board declared that 'democracy is still working in Bolivia.' Glad to see someone is holding them accountable."
"Bold choice of Chrystia Freeland to swear her Oath of Office on grandpa's copy of Mein Kampf rather than the traditional bible."
https://twitter.com/compartycanada/status/1197279398359130112
Treacherous for Bolivia and Canada.
'We Must Protect and Stand Up For Human Rights and Uphold International Laws' - Jagmeet Singh
https://twitter.com/6ixNuck/status/1198051196046659585
"So the NDP can retweet this tweet, but not your tweet on Bolivia..."
Can't imagine why.
would be useful to know more re the power struggle ongoing in the NDP power brokers....
I'm back with some enraging observations that do not support the Coup d'état and the bloody repression since. Didn't Morales know what would happen ? He'd apparently lost a vote on exceeding the legal number of terms. A court had somehow invalidated the result. Could he have waited for a run-off (2 candidate) vote ? And don't forget Cuba (lo amo) the only Communist one-party socialist country in all America and a friend of the MAS Mouvement Towards Socialism. Rather like Soviet Russia the only Communist one-party state in all Europe (until 1945). Did the Bolivian Communist Party support Morales ? What about the Venezuelan Communist Party and Maduro? The French Communist party was sure chummy with Moscow after 1945. Then NATO. No importance, you say...
There is nothing that Morales and MAS could have done to prevent the coup, except lose the election which they didn't.
Activist friends have advised me, but not confirmed, that the tide is turning in Bolivia, Considerable forces in the army and police have joined the resistance, and are coordinating or helping defend the Resistance controlled city of El Alto, amongst others.
That the interim president is desperate to convocate elections as their coup is losing support fast.......
(Hopefully not just wishful thinking!)
Could the Federal Government of Canada fall on a vote on the issue of Bolivia?
Is this reason behind the refusal of the NDP to take a principled stand?
Could the Federal Government of Canada fall on a vote on the issue of Bolivia?
Is this reason behind the refusal of the NDP to take a principled stand?
Given the Liberal/Tory majority there is not a hope in hell that a government could fall for following the US lead on foreign policy.
Bolivia: Anatomy of a Coup
https://popularresistance.org/bolivia-anatomy-of-a-coup/
A decent run-down of the key elements and events.
I'm new here, but I really don't understand why he would run again if he knew it would be preceived as against the constitution. Why was it so important that no one else in his party could lead. Even Putin lets someone else lead in order to avoid looking like a 'leader for life'. It seems that part of it is being overlooked on this thread.
Bolivian Coup Comes Less Than a Week After Morales Stopped Multinational Firm's Lithium Deal
Interesting...
I'm new here, but I really don't understand why he would run again if he knew it would be preceived as against the constitution. Why was it so important that no one else in his party could lead. Even Putin lets someone else lead in order to avoid looking like a 'leader for life'. It seems that part of it is being overlooked on this thread.
OK...here's the skinny:
1) Evo challenged the constitutionality of the term limit referendum in the courts. The courts- in Bolivia, judges and justices are elected, not appointed, btw, so it wasn't actually possible for Evo to "pack the courts with his cronies", as the right-wing press put it- ruled that the courts went against human rights law.
2) Most of the people-not all, but most-of the people who made an issue of Evo running against were the right-wing, anti-Indigenous opposition which dominates the eastern part of Bolivia. These people had never accepted that Evo was the legitimate leader of Bolivia from the start. These people never actually cared about the formalities of election-they simply wanted to restore the white supremacist old order and make sure the Indigenous community in Bolivia no longer had any share of the country's resource wealth, especially not the huge amounts of wealth which will be derived from the extraction of the country's lithium deposits-used in lithium ion batteries worldwide. The wealthy of Bolivia moved to push Evo out of power because he had just blocked a deal with foreign corporations which would have cheated the nation out of most of the lithium wealth and cheated the Indigenous community-the people who will now be badly underpaid to extract most of that wealth-out of virtually all of it. If it hadn't been Evo's decision to run again, they would have risen to make sure that no one from Evo's party was elected-it's not that different than the way the wealthy and the military in Brazil used a bogus corruption conviction to force Lula out of the race so that a rigged victory for Bolsonaro would be a certainty.
3) Any argument that the Bolivian military's decision to force Evo to resign at gunpoint was somehow about "clean elections" was permanently discredited when the two figures in Evo's party who were next in the line of succession to replace him were both forced, through death threats, to resign their offices and renounce their right to succeed Evo and serve as interim president.
4) Had the anti-Evo "protests" actually been about democracy, they would have stopped and let it go at that once Evo agreed to hold the second round of voting they'd demanded-even though he didn't have to; or once he was forced to resign, would at least at called on the military to back off and the illegitimate right-wing "interim" president who had essentially seized power to resign her office once Evo agreed to withdraw from the race. The fact that they did not do either of those things, and that and gave their wholehearted support to the military coupand the illegitimate interim presidend instead proves this was never about democracy at all, but about restoring the priviliges and dominance of Bolvia's traditional light-skinned, white-supremacist upper classes.
5) For whatever reasons, Evo had never managed to change the culture of the Bolivian military and move it away from the Latin American tradition of believing it had the right to intervene in politics in whatever way it wished-he may have faced an implicit U.S. threat to overthrow his government if he even tried to do that. That military is dominated by the same sort of people as the officers who made a pompous, arrogant show of posing with Che Guevara's corpse after they'd had ordered an enlisted man to shoot him because none of them had the guts to do it themselves-and the officers in that ghoulish "hunting party" picture participated in a military coup against a centrist government in Bolivia a year later.
6) I am not sure why Evo did choose to run again, but if this was a truly unpopular decision, he would not have had a solid lead in the round of voting which was held prior to the coup. And again, had he not, anyone from his party would have taken around the same vote share that Evo received-the country hadn't turned against Evo's actual policies.
I'm new here, but I really don't understand why he would run again if he knew it would be preceived as against the constitution. Why was it so important that no one else in his party could lead. Even Putin lets someone else lead in order to avoid looking like a 'leader for life'. It seems that part of it is being overlooked on this thread....
...This is my politically incorrect response...after dozens of years as an activist, sometime successful.......
People like Evo combine qualities of angelic and genius, very rare combination.
people in Bolivia as in many of the countries I work in...are desperate for help and hope...so when a leader comes along like Evo, they will do anything to keep him in power...and that is why their revolution now ongoing will win.....
[quote=Bec.De.Corbin]
Bolivian Coup Comes Less Than a Week After Morales Stopped Multinational Firm's Lithium Deal
Interesting...
[quote=NDPP]
I agree. More here..
After Evo the Lithium Question Looms Large
http://rabble.ca/comment/5658966#comment-5658966
Also #59
Bolivia Coup: Hatred of the Indian
https://www.blackagendareport.com/bolivia-coup-hatred-indian
"The author is the Vice President of Bolivia who was forced out of the country along with President Evo Morales.
'The question we must respond to is, how did the traditional middle-class incubate so much hatred and resentment towards the people, leading them to embrace racialized fascism centered on the Indian as the enemy...?"
how did the traditional middle-class incubate so much hatred and resentment towards the people......
....from what I am hearing, the people have taken control of 3 of the 7 provinces/Departments of the country.....setting up their own People´s Governments...in other words every class is participating, getting trained and armed, in preparation...so for sure they will not accepts a bs controlled election...
(hmm, so why do we?)
The restoration of the #Trump/#Trudeau brand of 'democracy' in #Bolivia at a glance.
Sad and depressing. The first photo being so full of promise - so groundbreaking.
There is one bright spot in this wavering coup! It puts the lie, once and for all in the myth of representational democracy. Which allows forGovernment, as long as it is the right kind.
No alternative transformational Government, if elected, can stand, for long, as the real forces that control all Societies, based on the principle of corruption based on the power of money creation hide between the facade of democracy.
In Bolivia the myth has been destroyed.
Now it is up to us, recognizing the power of this myth, to prepare useful strategy for the Transformation from this power of money!
Bolivia's New US-Backed Interim Govt Wastes No Time Privatizing Economy
"From privatizing natural resources to partnering with other right-wing regimes, Bolivia's new interim government has wasted no time in reversing years of hard-fought gains..."
The junta has already expelled 700 Cuban doctors, removed RT&Telesur from its airwaves and requested Israeli training of its military so as to learn how to genocide resisting Indigenous as seamlessly as Apartheid Israel.
Period of Calm Obscures Deepening Crisis of Democracy in Bolivia
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/07/period-of-calm-obscures-deepenin...
"Despite being a transitional regime, it has already announced sweeping changes including the privatization of the economy and the reestablishing of ties with USA and Israel. More worryingly, the transitional government continues to extend their hold on power..."
Bolivia's Anti-Imperialist Army School Renamed After Che's Assassins
https://twitter.com/telesurenglish/status/1218525950595477510
The military academy was renamed in honour of the assassins of internationalist hero Ernesto 'Che' Guevara.
So far the Bolivian coup is the Chilean coup without the worst of its human rights abuses.
So far the Bolivian coup is the Chilean coup without the worst of its human rights abuses.
I guess their PR people told them filling a stadium full of lefties was bad optics. This article is from last month. I don't know what definition you use for human rights abuses but to me live fire against peaceful protestors is the worst possible.
Five supporters of former Bolivian President Evo Morales were killed in clashes between protesters and security forces in central Bolivia on Friday.
The violence, which also left at least 75 injured, escalates unrest facing a four-day-old interim government whose opponents accuse it of carrying out a foreign-backed, right-wing coup to topple the country's first indigenous leader.
Thousands of mostly indigenous protesters had gathered peacefully in Sacaba, but clashes broke out when they attempted to cross a military checkpoint near the city of Cochabamba, the country's fourth-largest city.
Witnesses reported the police and military fired live ammunition at protesters, who had earlier been shot at with tear gas.
https://www.dw.com/en/bolivia-five-killed-in-pro-morales-protests/a-5127...
A major question in all of this: Did Evo ever make any efforts to get the Bolivian military to move to political neutrality, to get them to break with the "School Of The Assassins" mindset?
Also(and I'm mainly asking this because a skeptical relative of mine was relentlessly asking me) has there been any explanation as to why Evo apparently hadn't prepared anybody to be a successor candidate for the presidency, at least for the time when he'd have finally retired from the presidency?
I do NOT ask that question from anything close to the argument that Evo's candidacy for another term was illegitimate-the court ruling saying that he could was legitimate, as it was a court of elected jurists making the ruling and therefore Evo had every right to run, and the coup is an absolute disgrace to humanity-mainly I just want to be able to give this relative an answer he might possibly accept to those questions.
A major question in all of this: Did Evo ever make any efforts to get the Bolivian military to move to political neutrality, to get them to break with the "School Of The Assassins" mindset?
Easier said than done – ask René Schneider.
A major question in all of this: Did Evo ever make any efforts to get the Bolivian military to move to political neutrality, to get them to break with the "School Of The Assassins" mindset?
Easier said than done – ask René Schneider.
Thanks for the reminder. I suppose I'd thought that, forty-seven years later, we'd have moved on from that.
A major question in all of this: Did Evo ever make any efforts to get the Bolivian military to move to political neutrality, to get them to break with the "School Of The Assassins" mindset?
Easier said than done – ask René Schneider.
Thanks for the reminder. I suppose I'd thought that, forty-seven years later, we'd have moved on from that. Stupidly optimistic assumption on my part.
The involvement of Elliott Abrams in the Venezuela coup attempt would seem to indicate Washington's using not just its old playbook, but its old players as well, in Latin American matters.
Yes. Including Canada.
"The Bolivian regime has arrested the person who was handling the legal documents for Evo Morales' parliamentary bid. The documents have been seized. This is how they've kept Evo Morales off the ballot, pure persecution. They know they can't beat him fairly."
https://twitter.com/OVargas52/status/1223351167008346114
Ollie Vargas is a good twitter feed to follow for those interested in Bolivian political developments.
Independent analysis of the election results from some researchers at the MIT Election Data and Science Lab concludes that, surprise surprise, the OAS assertions about election fraud was not supported by the data:
"The OAS’s claim that the stopping of the trep during the Bolivian election produced an oddity in the voting trend is contradicted by the data. While there was a break in the reporting of votes, the substance of those later-reporting votes could be determined prior to the break.
Therefore, we cannot find results that would lead us to the same conclusion as the OAS. We find it is very likely that Morales won the required 10 percentage point margin to win in the first round of the election on October 20, 2019."
