ARTICLE: Evo Morales Says Rich Nations Must Pay

Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, has stated that rich nations must pay in some way for the destruction and poverty they have caused on other countries through imperialism and the monopolizing of their natural resources. Morales has made history by becoming the first indigenous president in Bolivia which has an indigenous majority! Morales is also part of the socialist bloc in the Americas along with Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba and Nicaragua.

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — The world's richest nations must be made to pay for the damage their profligate use of natural resources has caused in Bolivia and other developing countries, President Evo Morales said Friday.

"It's not possible that some in the industrialized world live very well economically while affecting, even destroying others," he told The Associated Press in an interview.

The first indigenous president of this country — whose rapidly melting glaciers scientists count among the most profound signs of global warming — said he and other Latin American leaders were exploring possible legal means for demanding compensation for the developed world's "ecological debt."

"If there is understanding, that would be great. But if not, there will have to be international legal responsibility," said the scrappy coca union leader, who turned 48 a week ago.

In a wide-ranging 70-minute interview in the living room of the presidential residence, Morales said his version of socialism requires state control of all basic services, including telecommunications.

He also reiterated his call for the United States, which he accuses of trying to undermine his government, to pull all of its soldiers out of this Andean nation.

Morales told the AP he was willing to help Colombia reach peace with its main rebel movement, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which he said was no longer justified in spilling blood after more than four decades of conflict.

On Bolivia's divisive domestic front, Morales said he ordered troops to withdraw from the main airport in the country's eastern lowlands last month to avoid bloodshed during a standoff over landing revenues. He said he received intelligence that the crowd that took over the airport included armed separatists looking to provoke a fatal confrontation.

Morales, an Aymara Indian whose father was a community leader, also said proudly that this majority indigenous nation will next week become the first to ratify the Sept. 13 declaration by the United Nations endorsing the rights of the world's native peoples.

The United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were the only countries to vote against the declaration.

After winning the presidency in December 2005 with 54 percent of the vote, Morales has increased Bolivia's annual natural gas revenues from $300 million to $2 billion a year by exerting greater state control of the industry.

He has nationalized a tin smelter, most of Bolivia's largest tin mine and the country's railroads, and government officials have suggested they intend to move to nationalize electric utilities.

His government this year completed the re-nationalization of water companies, a demand sparked by widespread popular protests. It is currently negotiating the re-nationalization of the country's main telecommunications company, Entel, which is owned by Telecom Italia SpA.

"It's communication. You want to communicate, right?" Morales said. "It's a basic service. It's a human right."

"Just because you talk on the phone doesn't mean a few people are getting rich," said Morales, seated on a couch wearing fur-lined slippers he said were given to him by fans in a former Soviet republic whose name escaped him.

Morales has allied himself closely with Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's leftist president, and Fidel Castro, Cuba's aging leader.

Asked if his vision of socialism follows the Chavez mold, Morales said the communal structure of Bolivia's indigenous societies and their "way of living in harmony with Mother Earth" set South America's poorest country on a different road.

"This is not the socialism of a leftist. It's the socialism of humanity."

His politics have not endeared him to the United States, which was his nemesis in the late 1980s and 1990s when he led coca-leaf growers in protests against Washington-directed forced eradication campaigns.

Expanding on public remarks last month in which he expressed his desire that all U.S. military personnel leave Bolivia, Morales said he wants all armed foreign troops out.
He said the only Venezuelan soldiers in the country are unarmed pilots who fly him around in loaned helicopters.

"As far as I know, the only armed soldiers I've seen are those from the United States," he said.

The U.S. Embassy would not say how many troops or military contractors it has in the country, but they are believed to not exceed a few dozen.

Blinking from a nap and blowing his nose when the afternoon interview began, Morales was asked how much sleep he gets nightly given his penchant for brutally long work days.

"Less than four hours," he said, though he said he always catnaps during helicopter flights.

"I'd like to get more rest, but you just can't."

Courtesy of:Saúl

EDINBURG: “Chavez, Morales, and Castro...Oh, My!” -- NOV 8

STUDENTS FOR PEACE PRESENTS

“Chavez, Morales, and Castro...Oh, My!”
A Panel Discussion on U.S. Policy in Latin America


Featuring:
Dr. Jessica Lavariega-Monforti &
Dr. Gary Mounce
(UTPA Political Science Dept.)

Thurs., November 8, 2007
SBS 101 (Auditorium)
12-1pm (Activity Period)


studentsforpeace@aol.com

Courtesy of:
joe nobody
pollutiondistillation@yahoo.com

ARTICLE: The Immigration Blame Game

The immigration blame game
John Buell: The immigration blame game
By BDN Staff
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 - Bangor Daily News


A column of mine on immigration earlier this year provoked both an op-ed response and numerous e-mails to me, charging I "don’t get it" that illegal immigrants are the cause of working class woes. My critics raised thoughtful concerns in need of a careful response.

Those who attack immigrants because of their legal status forget that U.S. citizens are not especially law abiding. Long before Mexicans crowded our labor markets, our citizens were taking far more cash under the table than undocumented immigrants ever have.

Some citizens have good reasons. I recently interviewed a young single mother who, not surprisingly, could not support her two children on $400 a month in welfare and $200 in food stamps. If she reported income, however, she would lose benefits. She earns several thousand dollars a year "under the table." She feels guilty about her lawlessness, but, "I am not going to let my family starve."

Both undocumented Mexican immigrants and many full U.S. citizens take money under the table. Both find themselves in increasingly desperate positions. But are undocumented Mexican immigrants the reason some
single mothers in Maine must take money under the table?

Two recent books, Aviva Chomsky’s "They Take Our Jobs — and 20 Other Myths about Immigration" and Jane Guskin and David Wilson’s "The Politics of Immigration," provide extensive documentation from a wide range of historical and economic perspectives that the same global economic restructuring that has led to outsourcing the best U.S. jobs and attacks on unions here has also badly damaged societies in the developing world and led to widespread migration of the poor.

There is, however, a tradition, often informed by racist and nationalist stereotypes, that has led American workers to blame economic dislocation and joblessness on the newest arrivals. Chomsky reminds us that in the 19th century white workers in the South "clung to their status of legal and racial superiority, but the entrenched racial inequalities undermined the status of poor whites as well." Black job seekers per se did not hurt poor whites, but rather their disenfranchisement combined with racism prevented their organization into unions and political movements. Employers enjoyed a pool of poor and easily exploitable workers with which to break strikes and undermine all working-class wages.

Some academic literature does suggest that low-skilled immigrants undermine working-class wages. But a contrasting body of literature both from academics and from those in the trenches finds no or minimal impact
on working class wages.

My take on this controversy is: It depends.

The effect of immigrant incursions depends on the cultural and political setting. If every immigrant worker received, merely by the fact of having a job, full access to minimum wage protection, rights to union organizing, access to occupational health and safety guarantees, and a realistic path to citizenship, employers would find it harder to use the undocumented to beat down wage standards for all. Guskin and Wilson cite U.S. Department of Labor studies showing that following the 1986 amnesty, real wages of undocumented workers rose dramatically, exerting upward pressure on all wages.

The U.S. today has no shortage of urgent tasks, from fighting fires to rebuilding levees, to laying new track lines. If all such work is properly compensated, if the Federal Reserve cared as much about job creation as inflation, if governments at all levels worried as much about the health of the infrastructure as the profits of the financial sector, plenty of good new jobs would be created.

The question for progressives is this: Are reforms of trade treaties, enforcement of workplace laws, and establishment of adequate wage standards more likely if we somehow expel most undocumented immigrants
by militarizing our border and turning employers into border cops? These initiatives risk fracturing the very coalitions needed to enact progressive reforms. Just as unfortunately, they distract workers from the role that corporate tax evasion and workplace violations play in wage stagnation.

Earlier immigrants from Ireland and Italy, also much vilified, made great economic and political contributions to our society. The same is possible today. The Black Commentator recently pointed out: "In the countries [current immigrants] hail from there are traditions of working class militancy and solidarity deeper and more widespread than anything here, and traditions of broad left wing social movements tougher and more enduring than we see here in the U.S. In Mexico, Nigeria, Indonesia and Brazil, in South Korea and Colombia, farm, factory and service workers join unions… and fight for their own rights, often at great personal cost."

Unfortunately, the legislation derailed in Congress last summer moved in the wrong direction. Its path to legalization was so complex and burdensome that few would be able to navigate it. Its guest worker programs tie immigrants to specific jobs in ways that make them even more dependent and exploitable. A new president and Congress need to address this problem from a more humane perspective.


John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor. Readers may contact him at jbuell@acadia.net.

Courtesy of: Saúl

An open letter to the Organization of American States

Good afternoon...

For over a year many of us in the U.S. have been actively opposing the border wall. Many of us have also been extremely active in opposing the concentration camps and prison camps that exploit the immigrant...in privatized "for-profit" detention facilities. Here in Texas, two such profit prisons are targets of our constant protests. T. Don Hutto in Taylor, Texas that has hundreds of children and their mothers from dozens of different countries...which receives about $10,000 per child per day. The other is in Raymondville, TX, which is a ten tent concentration camp, that has upwards of 2000 immigrants from some 50 different lands. This facility is expanding to add 1000 more beds.

Such facilities are being built all across the country. It is the intent of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to imprison (for profit) and deport the millions of undocumented immigrants that reside in our country. The operation is called the "End Game". ( http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dhs/endgame.pdf ).

On May 8, 2007, the UN Human Rights Commission, Special Rapporteur, Sr. Jorge Bustamante, came to Texas specifically to inspect the human rights violations against the immigrant children at the Hutto children's' prison. We collaborated with Sr. Bustamante and held a protest vigil in front of the prison camp. As you are no doubt aware, Sr. Bustamante was denied access by Secretary of DHS, Chertoff.

We would like you of the OAS to know that there is a vast network here in Texas and all across the US that are vehemently opposed to these crimes against our human family. We have attorneys, professors, journalists, business leaders, faith based organizations, human rights organizations, military and common citizens who are outraged over these atrocities.

Every day, all across the country, hundreds and sometimes thousands of immigrants are being rounded up and imprisoned like criminals...without any due process or civil liberties. The legislated goal of the ruling elite is to have a daily average of 41,000 immigrants in these for-profit prison camps. This is the darkest form of capitalism since slavery. Now, these facilities are "working" the detainees at the rate of $1 per day. These prison camps are turning into slave labor camps.

When the OAS does investigate the conditions here, we the grassroots citizens, would like to collaborate with your visits with some protests. Our network can provide you with information from all over the US that you would not other be able to gather up as a result of the prevailing secrecy. We have already done much of this info gathering and would be most eager to share the hard facts of this national and international tragedy with you. From some 30 states, we have been actively opposed to the trauma that is being conducted against innocent, desperate and helpless people.

Please help us as we try to help you...

In solidarity...

Jay

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Freedom Ambassadors
Connecting the Dots...Making a Difference
Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.
jay@villadelrio.com
(830)768-0768 (when in Del Rio)
(830734-8636 (cell-when on the road)
Please read my column: Inside the Checkpoints http://www.riograndeguardian.com/columns3.asp

Border Strategy Conference -- NOV 29-30

There will be a conference in El Paso, TX to develop guidelines for alternative border enforcement policies and practices.

Link to conference info: http://www.borderstrategyconf.org/

Courtesy of:
Martin Hagne
martinhagne@sbcglobal.net

ARTICLE: New Lawsuit Against Border Wall Has Huge Implications For South Texas

By Steve Taylor

No Border Wall spokesman Scott Nicol

BROWNSVILLE, November 2 - The No Border Wall group says a new lawsuit challenging the Real ID Act’s constitutionality could put a halt to fencing being erected along the South Texas border.

On Thursday, attorneys for Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club filed an amended complaint in federal court challenging the 2005 REAL ID Act. This legislation granted Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff the power to waive any law - federal, state or local - that would otherwise apply to border wall and road construction.

The amended complaint alleges that this unprecedented authority violates the fundamental separation of powers principles enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The environmental groups also argue that by delegating the power to pick and choose which laws will apply to border wall construction, Congress has unconstitutionally given away its lawmaking responsibilities to a politically-appointed executive branch official who is not accountable to the American public.

“This lawsuit is really important news for the fight against the border wall,” Scott Nicol, spokesman for the No Border Wall group, told the Guardian.

“The Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife are challenging the Real ID Act's constitutionality, and if they win Chertoff will be unable to issue further waivers of law along the border.”

The No Border Wall group has been leading the grassroots fight against the border wall being built in the Rio Grande Valley. In September, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued new maps showing 70 miles of proposed fencing, with the greatest concentration of “tactical infrastructure” to be assembled in the Brownsville area.

Nicol said it would be “virtually impossible” for the wall to be built along the Lower Rio Grande in a manner that complies with both the Secure Fence Act and the Endangered Species Act, not to mention state and federal laws that protect private property, - if the new lawsuit prevails.

“Under section 102 of the Real ID Act an unelected Administration appointee has the power to ignore all of our nation's laws. If this lawsuit is successful it will restore the rule of law,” Nicol said.

On October 10, U.S. District Court Judge Ellen S. Huvelle issued a temporary restraining order stopping border wall and road construction within the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.

The Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife had argued that DHS and the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the San Pedro area, hadn’t properly analyzed the impacts of the construction on wildlife and other natural resources.

The groups also argued that the agencies had failed to include the public in their decision-making process.

Chertoff responded by invoking the REAL ID Act to waive 19 laws in order to resume construction of this particular wall segment.

“I want to stress that it’s not our intention to run roughshod over existing laws and regulations,” Chertoff said at the time. “But, Congress recognized the significance that secure borders have on our national security and provided legal authority for me to waive any restrictions that may impede our progress.”

Chertoff has invoked the provisions of the REAL ID Act twice before. He used it to finish construction of a fence in San Diego and another fence in Arizona.
Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife, said that in the case of the San Pedro conservation area, Chertoff rode roughshod over 19 laws.

“These laws were put in place to provide all of us with clean air and water and ensure our treasured places and wildlife are protected,” Schlickeisen said. “The Secretary’s action was a clear and unprecedented abuse of authority and demonstrated a profound disregard for the system of checks and balances assured in our constitution. The Secretary left us no choice but to address the unconstitutional nature of the REAL ID Act.”

Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope agreed. “The Bush administration should know that we have the ability to protect our nation while at the same time preserving the unique wildlife and treasured lands along the border. Arbitrarily waiving environmental protections is an extreme path to tread,” Pope said.
In the case of the San Pedro conservation area, the statutes waived by Chertoff are:

The National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Clean Air Act, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Noise Control Act, the Solid Waste Disposal Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act, the Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act, the Antiquities Act, the Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act, the Arizona-Idaho Conservation Act, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the Farmland Protection Policy Act, and the Administrative Procedures Act.

Nicol said he fully expects Chertoff to waive all federal laws again, should the City of Brownsville or various environmental groups succeed with their legal action against the border wall.

“Having exercised this unprecedented power three times already, it is certain that he (Chertoff) will do so again and again to build the 700 miles of wall called for by the Secure Fence Act,” Nicol said.

“In Texas, this will mean that cities and private landowners as well as wildlife refuges will feel the walls’ unmitigated impact. When walls slice through Roma, Rio Grande City, Granjeno, and Brownsville, all of the legal protections that U.S. citizens expect and deserve will be thrown to the wind.”

Write Steve Taylor

Courtesy of:
Rio Grande Guardian
www.riograndeguardian.com

Say NO to "Plan Mexico"

Dear Readers,

Buried in the $46 billion supplemental war spending proposal that
President Bush submitted to Congress on Oct. 22 is a $1.4 billion aid
package to Mexico to be distributed over the next three years,
purportedly to fight drug trafficking and organized crime in Mexico. The
aid package, called Plan Mexico (http://americas.irc-online.org/am/4611)
for its resemblance to the $5 billion Plan Colombia, would consist
largely in advanced military training and equipment such as helicopters
and surveillance aircraft, according to the Mexican foreign minister.

We urge you to call, write, and otherwise notify Congress to oppose
funding for BOTH the Iraq War and Plan Mexico.

We are not against the US helping Mexico's people - if aid is aimed to
develop economic opportunities in their home communities. A massive
military build up in Mexico does nothing to help and will inevitably lead
to increased repression. As has been the case with Plan Colombia, there
is great concern that Mexico could use their new equipment in
counter-insurgency raids against both social movements and suspected
guerrilla forces, mainly in Mexico's indigenous and highly marginalized
south.

Please read and repost our brief report on Plan Mexico contributed by
Global Exchange Human Rights Media Fellow, John Gibler:

-----

Why We Oppose Plan America

This week the Bush Administration officially announced the Merida
Initiative, a $1.4 billion aid package to Mexico to be distributed over
the next three years purportedly to fight drug trafficking and organized
crime in Mexico. The aid package, called Plan Mexico for its resemblance
to the $5 billion Plan Colombia, would consist largely in advanced
military equipment such as helicopters and surveillance aircraft,
according to the Mexican foreign minister.

The plan has come under immediate attack on both sides of the border.

According to the Associated Press, Rep. Eliot Engel, chairman of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee's Western Hemisphere subcommittee
(http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/sub_westhem.asp), said Congress was "in
no way consulted" as the aid plan was developed.

"This is not a good way to kick off such an important bilateral effort to
combat drug trafficking and drug-related violence in Mexico," Engel told
the AP. "We will have to carefully comb over every detail of the
president's request in coming weeks and months."

Carlos Fazio, an expert on Mexican social movements and militarization,
writes that Plan Mexico would amount to "ceding national sovereignty and
the de facto subordination of the national armed forces," to U.S. will.

Drug violence in Mexico has reached truly harrowing levels over the past
two years, with over 2,000 people slain in the streets so far in 2007,
most of them public officials, police, reporters, and rival
drug-traffickers. Drug killings have made Mexico the second most
dangerous country in the world (after Iraq) for journalists, according to
Reporters Without Borders. Still, the most terrifying fact of Mexico's
drug violence has always been the depth of the drug cartel's penetration
into seemingly every facet of the Mexican police, military, and judicial
system.

Mexico's first anti-drug Czar, General Rebollo, was on the payroll of one
of Mexico's bloodiest cartels; he is now in a maximum-security prison. In
Tabasco state, drug gangs beheaded a local official who had made a
supposedly anonymous call to the authorities to denounce drug trafficking
through his region. The note written on poster board in his own blood and
left over his headless shoulders read: "This happened to me for making an
anonymous call to the authorities, and they were the very ones who did
this to me." In the past few months, local officials in Altar, Sonora
were threatened with death after calling state officials to denounce a
drug-gang kidnapping near Altar of 300 migrants on their way to the
border.

This past June, nearly 20 soldiers shot and killed three children and
their mother at a road block meant to detect drug traffickers in the
state of Sinaloa; seven of those soldiers tested positive for marijuana
use and one of the seven also tested positive for cocaine.

As has been the case with Plan Colombia, there is great concern that
Mexico could use their new equipment in counter-insurgency raids against
both social movements and suspected guerrilla forces, mainly in Mexico's
indigenous and highly marginalized south.

The Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), a guerrilla force that first
appeared in 1996 in Guerrero state, has recently published repeated
communique's denouncing the disappearance of two of their members by
government forces. In retaliation, the EPR has detonated various
explosives placed in Mexico's national natural gas lines in July and
September of this year. There is great concern that Mexico could use
their increased military budget and additional military aid from the
U.S., to re-implement a "dirty war" counter-insurgency operation against
social movements, rural organizations, and indigenous communities
suspected of or used as scapegoats for guerrilla activities. Mexico's
repeated use of torture to force confessions in cases as distinct as
suspected guerrilla activity and the femicides of Ciudad Juarez has been
well documented by both nongovernmental and governmental organizations.

The Mexican army used anti-drug helicopters in military attacks against
the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in 1994. Within the last year
the Mexican Navy flew surveillance planes over the city of Oaxaca and the
Zapatista international gathering in La Realidad, Chiapas.

Moreover, paramilitary and para-police attacks continue in Mexico.
Mexican soldiers protected paramilitary forces that massacred 47 people
in Acteal in 1997; and para-police units killed over 20 people during the
mostly non-violent civil disobedience movement of the Oaxaca Peoples'
Popular Assembly (APPO) in 2006.

An on-going series of new reports by the Chiapas-based organization
Center for Political Analysis and Socio-Economic Research (CAPISE -
http://capise.org.mx/) document recent changes in military deployment,
paramilitary activity, and highway projects that combine to form a
counterinsurgency strategy to displace Zapatista communities. The army is
reinforcing military bases near Zapatista communities with Special
Forces, including airborne elite troops and special elite units from
Mexico City without jurisdiction to operate in Chiapas.

On October 27, it will have been a year since plain-clothes police, city
council members and a local judge were all photographed shooting at
protesters in Oaxaca. That day, gunmen shot and killed two Oaxacan
teachers, Esteban Zurita Lopez and Emilio Alonso Fabian and New York
Indymedia reporter Brad Will. A year later and impunity reigns
(http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/mexico/dispatches/5038.html). The men photographed still hold their jobs in local government; no one has been convicted of the murders; and the state and federal governments persist in their efforts to blame members of the APPO for killing Brad Will.

Mexican officials and analysts have long said that the U.S. should curb
the consumption of drugs within its own borders and the flow of high
caliber guns to the traffickers in Mexico. Plan Mexico would simply give
military equipment to the very Mexican forces that have so long been
implicated in drug trafficking without first addressing the U.S.'s active
role in drug violence by providing the market place for drugs and the
guns used to kill.

Courtesy of:
Carina
carina_souflee@hotmail.com

National Black Out Day -- NOV 2

FYI, as of yesterday Michael Bell was remanded back to jail by the same judge who tried him as an adult. He was sentenced to 18 additional months on a probation violation supposedly. As a result, his parents are being charged approximately $600 per month for each month that he is housed in prison. On Tuesday, Michael's father was fired from his job because his employer told him that he needed someone who could be at work and that he was taking off too much. We really need to stick together and make our voices be heard. This could be our children. We are regressing fast as a people.

This morning Al Sharpton vowed that he would make sure that the family would not have to pay the money, if it had to come out of his own pocket. This is so sad. Let's all try to be proactive in this matter. --

Please spread to at least five other people and make sure you inform them to send the info to five other people, to spread the word.

National Black Out Day
on November 2….

Do not make any purchases on this day but please do not make any major $ amount purchases, the day before or the day after because then the Black Out will be of no effect. This is from 102.5 Grown & Sexy radio station; they are asking their listeners to spread the word for those who may not listen to the station.

This is the second phase from the Jena 6 and many other cities and people of color are facing similar situation like the Jena 6.

Courtesy of:
INDIGENOUS NATIONS ALLIANCE-MILLIONS MORE MOVEMENT