A View From the South
November 21, 2008

By Amy Goodman
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/19718


Evo Morales knows about "change you can believe in." He also knows what happens when a powerful elite is forced to make changes it doesn't want.

Morales is the first indigenous president of Bolivia, the poorest country in South America. He was inaugurated in January 2006. Against tremendous internal opposition, he nationalized Bolivia's natural-gas fields, transforming the country's economic stability and, interestingly, enriching the very elite that originally criticized the move.

Yet last September, the backlash came to a peak. In an interview in New York this week, Morales told me: "The opposition, the right-wing parties ... decided to do a violent coup. ... They couldn't do it."

In response, presidents from South American nations met in Chile for an emergency summit, led by the two women presidents, Michelle Bachelet of Chile and Cristina Kirchner of Argentina. The group issued a statement condemning the violence and supporting Morales.

Morales continued in our interview: "The reason why I'm here in the U.S.: I want to express my respect to the international community, because everybody condemned the coup against democracy to the rule of law—everybody but the U.S., but the ambassador of the U.S. It's incredible."

After the attempted coup, Morales ejected U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg, declaring, "He is conspiring against democracy and seeking the division of Bolivia." Morales went on: "He used to call me the Andean bin Laden. And the coca growers, he used to call them Taliban. ... Permanently, from the State Department of the U.S., I have been accused of being a drug trafficker and a terrorist. And even now that I'm president, that continues on the part of the embassy. I know it does not come from the American people."

Morales has now given the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration three months to leave the country, and announced at the United Nations Monday that the DEA will not be allowed back. Morales was a "cocalero," a coca grower. Coca is central to Bolivian indigenous culture and the local economy. As Roger Burbach, director of the Center for the Study of the Americas, writes, "Morales advocated ‘Coca Yes, Cocaine No,' and called for an end to violent U.S.-sponsored coca eradication raids, and for the right of Bolivian peasants to grow coca for domestic consumption, medicinal uses and even for export as an herb in tea and other products."

Morales aims to preserve the Bolivian heritage of coca growing, while eliminating the scourge of drug trafficking. He says the U.S. uses the war on drugs as a cover to destabilize his country: "If they really fought against drug trafficking, it would be very different." He said the South American leaders are finally organizing amongst themselves: "We are actually setting up a national intelligence in collaboration with our neighbors Argentina, Chile, Brazil. And that way, the fight against drug trafficking is going to be more effective, but it's going to be something that has a political element in it. If we don't permit the DEA to come back, that doesn't mean we'll break relationships with the U.S."

The resurgent democracies in Latin America are hoping for better relations with an Obama administration. On the election of the first African-American U.S. president, the first indigenous president of Bolivia told me, "Maybe we can complement each other to look for equality among people, people who are here on Mother Earth." After we spoke, Morales headed off to Washington to visit the Lincoln Memorial and to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: "I want to honor my brothers, the movement, the Afro-American movement. I have the obligation to honor the people who preceded us, the ones who fought for the respect of human rights and rights in general."

Thousands are gathering outside Fort Benning, Ga., this weekend for the annual mass protest and civil disobedience against the U.S. School of the Americas (now called WHINSEC), a military training facility that is alleged to have trained hundreds of Latin American soldiers who have gone home to commit human-rights violations. The wounds of U.S. intervention in Latin America are still raw. President-elect Obama has an opportunity to reach out and grab the extended olive branch being offered by President Morales.

Cocaine addiction is more a product of prohibition than prohibition is an answer to cocaine addiction. Chewing coca leaf is not considered addictive (See the bold print below.) The milder forms of coca are needed in breaking cocaine addiction.

I doubt anyone will read any of this, but maybe they will read the first few paragraphs I put up from http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/e.html


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- Coca: powder cocaine and crack substitute: making their abuse obsolete.
- Medical Coca: a multitude of valuable therapeutic applications.
- Coca: the safer alternative to licit stimulants, particularly Tobacco.

Presenting Coca in this context is a potent antidote to popular misconceptions that drug prohibition somehow serves the general welfare. People support prohibition, generally viewing it favorably in inverse proportion to the degree they see illegal drugs as "bad." The story of Coca though is a powerful indictment of prohibition. Here is something clearly good, useful for a variety of medical uses, and as a daily stimulant. Indeed, to a greater extent than medical Marijuana, drug war proponents acknowledge such medical uses of Coca as a remedy for high altitude sickness, other forms of nausea, and stomach aches; indeed recommendations for these uses of Coca are found in virtually any Andean tourist guide book. People in most parts of the world though are generally oblivious to this, focusing instead the situation with concentrated cocaine that prohibition created and sustains. As people have had the drug issue defined in such a convoluted way to misperceive the illicit market in powder cocaine and crack -- cocaine hydrochloride and sulfate -- as the natural situation that would exist without prohibition, ignorance of Coca is crucial towards maintaining popular support for the drug war!

The social importance of this panel is undeniably high. Let the following serve as but one example. The leaf's reported utility to the newly born --- as Coca is valuable to CNS stimulation and improves the blood count of oxygen, giving it to women in labor has immense potential towards reducing the instances of brain damage amongst newborns (see the Saturday newsletter from the 1993 DPF conference) -- alone could save millions of dollars in medical bills and lost productivity, to say nothing of the prevalence of these heart-breaking tragedies sustained by widespread ignorance of Coca's therapeutic benefits.

Given the President's concerns over reducing health care costs and Coca leaf's potential with this, is extremely valuable to the general welfare. Indeed, perhaps this is the drug policy reformists' most powerful approach towards dispelling the false utopic vision now clouding a clear perspective of the drug war, for nobody can dismiss (or ignore) it without appearing down right callous.

The Clintons ought to find this irresistible.


I wrote this with the idea of presenting the various therapeutic uses of Coca that could reduce health care costs, highlighting Anita Bennett’s idea of giving Coca tea to women in labor to ease childbirth and thus reduce the occurrence of protracted births that cause brain damage for newly borns. This panel was to feature (and had the support of) Harvard University’s Dr. Lester Grinspoon, yet was rejected by the D.P.F., with a letter taking issue with my inviting speakers, or in other words, inform proposed speakers of the proposed panel that it was proposed they would appear upon. `

“The Crucial Next Stage: Health Care and Human Rights” held November 16-19, 1994 at Loews L’Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C. would include no panels nor panel presentations about Coca’s medicinal uses, and excluding even a Latin America panel, and by holding a cocaine panel focused strictly upon “The Historic Cocaine Report of the World Health Organization” held Thursday November 17 (4:00-5:30) with David Lewis, MD Brown University; Craig Reinarman, PhD Stevenson College; Lisa Mathew Simon Fraser University; and Don Des Jarlis. MD Beth Israel. This panel addressed the uses of refined cocaine and did not focus on the uses of coca.

This would not because the W.H.O. had ignored coca. Following the 1992-93 W.H.O. meetings, W.H.O. would set out to study Coca and cocaine.

In 1994, after two years of research in 19 countries, a group of well-respected investigators concluded that coca leaf chewing is not addictive. They also found that most cocaine users consume very little of the drug and experience few serious problems. The results were summarized in a March 1995 press release.

The U.S. government did not tolerate this, and would bully W.H.O. to suppress these portions of the study by threatening to withhold funds. In May 1995, according to W.H.O.’s records, the U.S. representative to WHO, Neil Boyer: "took the view that the study on cocaine...indicates that [WHO's] program on substance abuse was headed in the wrong direction" and that "if WHO activities relating to drugs failed to reinforce proven drug control approaches, funds for the relevant programs should be curtailed." The full results of the study were never released.

The U.S. government would be likewise quickly negative in its reaction to Luxembourg’s February 22, 1995 stand against Coca's prohibition, when its parliament at the Chambre des Deputes unanimously approved a resolution promoted by the COCA ’95 campaign asking the government to allow the import of coca leaves and inoffensive derivates to the country, including teas, and toothpaste. By the next morning, the U.S. Embassy had called the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Luxembourg to ask if the deputies had gone crazy. [an insane statement from a superpower that pushes criminal mercantilism for chemically laced Virginia Bright Leaf poison!]

http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/events/lisbon/09_oomen

So much for any expectations that the Clinton Administrations would have any better regard for the truth then the sadly similar opposition Republican Party
Back in the U.S.A., the Drug Policy Foundation’s 1995 9th International Conference on Drug Policy Reform in Santa Monica, California that October; it was titled "Harm Reduction: Bringing the International Community Together” would break with tradition in at least two ways. It broke a 7 year run of events located in Washington, D.C. And it would include the only[1] Coca specific panel appearing in any printed D.P.F. Conference Schedule in its entire run of conference from 1987- 2005: “COCA '95: A Necessary Drug Policy Alternative from Abroad” featuring a variety of Coca scholars from the international community: Peruvian journalist Roger Rumrill, MamaCoca author Anthony Richard Henman, Bolivian Dr. Jorge Hurtado [via video], and U.C.L.A.’s Dr. Ronald K. Siegel at U.C.L.A., and moderated by myself, Douglas A. Willinger, who proposed his panel to the D.P.F. earlier that year.

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/19709
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The United States: Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia

November 20, 2008 By Roger Burbach


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Bolivian President Evo Morales is visiting the United Nations and the Organization of American States this week to report on the recent US coup attempt against his government. He will also meet with members of Congress to deal with "the worst diplomatic crisis" in the history of the two countries, and hopes to open a dialogue to normalize relations once Pressident-elect Barak Obama takes office.


Below is the story of US efforts over the past three years to topple Morales.

By Roger Burbach


Evo Morales is the latest democratically-elected Latin American president to be the target of a US plot to destabilize and overthrow his government. On September 10, 2008 Morales expelled US Ambassador Philip Goldberg because "he is conspiring against democracy and seeking the division of Bolivia."

Observers of US-Latin American policy tend to view the crisis in US-Bolivian relations as due to a policy of neglect and ineptness towards Latin America because of US involvement in the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. In fact, the Bolivia coup attempt was a conscious policy rooted in US hostility towards Morales, his political party the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and the social movements that are aligned with him.

"The US embassy is historically used to calling the shots in Bolivia, violating our sovereignty, treating us like a banana republic," says Gustavo Guzman, who was expelled as Bolivian ambassador to Washington following Goldberg's removal. (1) In 2002, when Morales narrowly lost his first bid for the presidency, US ambassador Manuel Rocha openly campaigned against him, threatening, " if you elect those who want Bolivia to become a major cocaine exporter again, this will endanger the future of US assistance to Bolivia." Because he led the Cocaleros Federation prior to assuming the presidency, the US State Department called Morales an "illegal coca agitator."(2) Morales advocated "Coca Yes, Cocaine No," and called which for an end to violent U.S.-sponsored coca eradication raids, and for the right of Bolivian peasants to grow coca for domestic consumption, medicinal uses and ! even for export as an herb in tea and other products.

"When Morales triumphed in the next presidential election," says Guzman, "it represented a defeat for the United States." Shortly after his inauguration, Morales received a call from George Bush, offering to help "bring a better life to Bolivians." Morales asked Bush to reduce US trade barriers for Bolivian products, and suggested that he come for a visit. Bush did not reply. As Guzman notes, "the United States was trying to woo Morales with polite and banal comments to keep him from aligning with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez." David Greenlee, the US ambassador prior to Goldberg, expressed his "preoccupation" with Bolivia's foreign alliances, while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others at the Pentagon began talking about "security concerns" in Bolivia. (3)

Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, the highest ranking US official to attend Morales' inauguration, declared a willingness to dialogue with Morales. In fact, what followed were almost three years of diplomatic wrangling while the U.S. provided direct and covert assistance to the opposition movement centered in the four eastern departments of Bolivia known as "La Media Luna". Dominated by agro-industrial interests, the departments began a drive for regional autonomy soon after Morales, the first Indian president in Bolivian history took office. (About 55% of the country's population is Indian.) Headed by departmental prefects (governors) and large landowners, the autonomy movement has been determined to stymie Morales' plans for national agrarian reform, and bent on taking control of the substantial hydro-carbon resources located in the Media Luna.

The Bush administration has pursued a two-track policy similar to the strategy the United States employed to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. The diplomatic negotiations initiated by Shannon centered almost exclusively on differences over drug policies, with the Bush administration continually threatening to cut or curtail economic assistance and preferential trade if Bolivia did not abide by the US policy of coca eradication and criminalization. At the same time, the United States through its embassy in La Paz and the Agency for International Development (USAID), funded political forces that opposed Morales and MAS. The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), with 37 in-country agents, appears to have acted like the CIA in Bolivia, gathering intelligence and engaging in clandestine political operations with the opposi! tion.

Intervention is evident from the very start of the Morales administration, with early USAID activities through the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI). After Morales took office, USAID documents state the OTI set out "to provide support to fledgling regional governments." Altogether the OTI funneled 116 grants for $4,451,249 "to help departmental governments operate more strategically."(4) In an effort to establish expedient political ties, the OTI also brought departmental prefects to meet with US governors. (5)

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