PrairiePundit

Washington Examiner: ‘This is not Venezuela!’: Socialist leader of Bolivia Evo Morales resigns as protests roil nation Socialism sucks.  It is too bad that some in the Democrat field still want to push this horrible system on the US.

NY Times: U.S. Drug War Expands to Africa, a Newer Cartel Hub The United States, trying to combat Latin American groups that are using Africa to smuggle cocaine into Europe, has begun training an elite counternarcotics police unit in Ghana. This fight has gotten harder since the al Qaeda affiliate took over Mali.  They have been involved in the transit of drugs delivered from Venezuela into West Africa.  There have been reports that the trade is facilitated by people within the Chavez government some of whom have recently been promoted.  For some reason, we are fighting this battle in Africa rather than dealing with the perps in Venezuela.  The drugs probably originate with the FARC in Colombia, although some may also come from Bolivia which is also reported to be a center for cocaine production under the Morales regime. Ghana is just one of the Western African countries in the distribution chain.

Miami Herald: A year ago this month, Bolivian President Evo Morales inaugurated the College for Defense of the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA) with a speech in which he called for the expulsion of U.S. intelligence agencies, a new military doctrine based on “asymmetrical war” against “imperialism” and the “abolition” of the U.N. Security Council. He also attacked the press, calling CNN a “tool of capitalism”,   Morales spoke in the presence of Iran’s defense minister, Gen Ahmed Vahidi, who had to be rushed from the ceremony when it was learned that Argentine prosecutors were issuing an international arrest warrant over his alleged role in the 1994 Hezbollah bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.   ALBA is a Venezuelan-led association of anti-U.S. governments which also includes Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and some Caribbean island states dependent on Venezuelan oil subsidies. The fledgling alliance has been given little ...

Image by Olmovich via Flickr BBC: Protesters in Bolivia have blocked main roads and clashed with police, on the ninth day of nationwide demonstrations against the government. Police used tear gas to clear the main road south of La Paz, and protesters fought back with stones and slingshots. Teachers and health workers are on strike to demand a 15% pay increase. The unrest is the worst yet faced by President Evo Morales , who once led similar protests that forced two previous presidents from power. There have also been street protests and road blockades in cities across Bolivia, including Cochabamba , Santa Cruz and Tarija . The biggest clashes happened 45km south of La Paz, Bolivia's main city, where around 2,000 rural teachers used rocks to block the main road to the rest of the country. Several people were reported injured as riot police moved in to reopen the road. The protests are being led by Bolivia's main trade union federation, the COB, which is demandi...

Image via Wikipedia BBC: A former commander of Bolivia 's anti-narcotics police force has been arrested in Panama on charges of drugs trafficking, Bolivian authorities say. Gen Rene Sanabria was immediately transferred to the US to face trial. Bolivia has arrested three other senior police officers suspected of helping him smuggle cocaine to the US. Gen Sanabria was head of Bolivia's anti-drug agency until 2009, and was still working as an intelligence adviser to the government. Bolivian Interior Minister Sacha Llorenti said Gen Sanabria was suspected of travelling to Panama to organise further shipments of cocaine to the US, after allegedly despatching 144kg (317lbs) of the drug last November. He said Bolivia expected to receive details of the charges against him from the US on Monday, and did not rule out asking for his extradition. Gen Sanabria was arrested on arrival in Panama on Thursday, but this was not made public by the Panamanian or US authorities. ....

CNN: Bolivia seeks buzz with coca campaign

Image via Wikipedia Carlos Alberto Montaner: Twenty-first-century socialism in Latin America actually consists of five socialisms, as many as the countries that constitute that caudillo -led, anti-republican, chaotic and authoritarian little world. They unite in anti-Americanism , in the conviction that individuals must be at the service of the State, not the opposite, in their contempt for the market and in the superstition that the caudillo knows exactly what benefits or hurts all citizens, but they're very different. The governments that compose it are Cuba , Venezuela , Bolivia , Ecuador and Nicaragua . ... He goes on to explain what each hopes to get from their socialist fantasy. This will not end well for them. Related articles Chavez Tastes Defeat Over Reforms (time.com)

Image via Wikipedia BBC: Bolivia has announced a sharp rise in the price of fuel, with petrol and diesel going up by more than 70%. The main transport union called an indefinite strike in protest. The state could not go on subsidising prices when so much fuel was being smuggled abroad by profiteers, Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera said. The government said it would compensate for the fuel price rise by increasing public sector wages and freezing utility bills. "We are bringing fuels up to international price levels ," Mr Garcia said on Sunday. "State subsidies cost $380m (£246m) a year; we don't want this to continue. We buy expensive diesel fuel and sell it cheap." Low-octane petrol prices will now rise 73%, while diesel will go up 83%. ... This is an unusually smart move for the Bolivia control freaks who labor under the mistaken impression that socialism is some value to the people. Even they are having to bend a little to market for...

Image via Wikipedia BBC: Bolivian prosecutors have charged 39 people over an alleged plot to assassinate President Evo Morales and launch an armed rebellion last year. They include opposition politicians and a former general who captured the guerrilla leader Che Guevara in 1967. The alleged plot was uncovered in April 2009, when Bolivan police killed three suspected European mercenaries in the eastern city of Santa Cruz. The accused have denied the charges, calling them politically motivated. Most are already under arrest, but 17 are now living outside Bolivia . The most prominent politician charged is Branco Marinkovic, a business leader and former head of the opposition Civic Committee of Santa Cruz, who is in exile in the US. Among the former senior military officers charged is the retired General Gary Prado, who led the unit that captured and killed the Argentine -born guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara . ... I am skeptical. Morales has been try...

CNN: Colombian authorities have proof that high-ranking leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, live in Venezuela, the Colombian government said Thursday. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe issued a statement listing their names. Among them is one with the alias "Ivan Marquez;" Rodrigo Granda, whose alias is "Ricardo;" Timoleon Jimenez, whose alias is "Timochenko;" German Briceno, whose alias is "Grannobles;" and Carlos Marin Guarin, whose alias is "Pablito." The president said there are other "integral members" of the group in Venezuela. ... Security analysts have said FARC guerrillas operate mostly in Colombia but have carried out extortion, kidnappings and other activities in Venezuela, Panama and Ecuador. FARC is accused of trafficking in cocaine to finance its insurgency and the group has thousands of supporters, mostly in rural areas. FARC has to hide it leadership in Venezuela, becaus...

Washington Post: For two years, Colombian officials have accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez of providing arms and sanctuary to Marxist rebels intent on toppling Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, Washington's closest ally in a turbulent region. Now, based on documents and witness testimony, Chávez is facing fresh accusations that his government has gone well beyond assisting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Documents seized from two subversive groups, along with information provided by former Colombian guerrillas, suggest that Venezuela facilitated training sessions here between the FARC and ETA, a separatist group in Spain that uses assassinations and bombings in its effort to win independence for the northern Basque region. The evidence led Judge Eloy Velasco of the National Court in Madrid to level charges of terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder in March against a Chávez government official, Arturo Cubillas, and a dozen members of ...

Sara Carter: Mexican drug cartels are strengthening alliances with a Colombian terrorist group that has engaged in a decades-long war to topple the U.S.-supported government in Bogota, intelligence officials said. The cartels are aggressively negotiating with the Marxist guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as FARC for the purchase of "multiton quantities of cocaine directly from South America," said Michael Braun, former administrator and chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The strengthened ties between Mexican cartels and the FARC, which for years offered security for Colombian drug organizations in return for cash for weapons, is a bad sign for already tenuous U.S. border security, Braun said. "An unholy alliances between the FARC and the Mexican cartels will undoubtedly strengthen these groups, and could land FARC operatives in Mexico," he said. "That could extend the FARC's ope...

BBC: Bolivian President Evo Morales has ordered the nationalisation of four private electricity companies. Police moved into the offices of Corani, Valle Hermoso and Guaracachi firms, following Mr Morales' decree. Corani is half owned by a subsidiary of France's GDF Suez. Guaracachi's main partner is Britain's Rurelec, while ELFEC and Valle Hermoso are local. President Morales said that the government now controlled 80% of electricity generation in the country. Last year, Mr Morales announced the takeover of a subsidiary of British oil company BP, which supplied jet fuel across the Andean nation. He has recently nationalised oil and gas reserves to redistribute wealth to Bolivia's indigenous majority. ... He is making the same mistakes Chavez made and it will lead to greater inefficiency and inflation. He will wind up making everyone in Bolivia poorer that they already are. A command economy just does not work. Cuba and Venezuela are just the last of a...

NY Times: When the tap across from her mud-walled home dried up in September, Celia Cruz stopped making soups and scaled back washing for her family of five. She began daily pilgrimages to better-off neighborhoods, hoping to find water there. Though she has lived here for a decade and her husband, a construction worker, makes a decent wage, money cannot buy water. “I’m thinking of moving back to the countryside; what else can I do?” said Ms. Cruz, 33, wearing traditional braids and a long tiered skirt as she surveyed a courtyard dotted with piglets, bags of potatoes and an ancient red Datsun. “Two years ago this was never a problem. But if there’s not water, you can’t live.” The glaciers that have long provided water and electricity to this part of Bolivia are melting and disappearing, victims of global warming , most scientists say. If the water problems are not solved, El Alto, a poor sister city of La Paz, could perhaps be the first large urban casualty of climate change. A Wo...

From the Guardian: Morales wins second term in Bolivian elections He is determined to impose the evils of socialism and a failed command economy model on the people of Bolivia. He will wind up making everyone poorer. He has also allowed the narco thugs from FARC to set up export operations in Bolivia joining Venezuela as a transit point for dope.

Washington Times: Narco-trafficking cartels are migrating to the Andes region in Bolivia, where a diminished U.S. presence has allowed a boom in cocaine production and the opening of new drug routes, regional anti-drug officials say. Recent studies by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime show a steep rise in cocaine production in Bolivia and a smaller increase in Peru. They also show a drop in Colombian cocaine output, which is subject to increased anti-drug efforts by the U.S. and Colombian governments. Potentially more significant is Bolivia's emergence as a major hub for jungle laboratories that turn coca paste, which can be imported from anywhere in the Andean region, into refined cocaine. "Like never before we have discovered these types of factories around the country," said Col. Oscar Nina, chief of Bolivia's police anti-drug unit. He added that his unit has destroyed more than 20 cocaine laboratories so far this year. In addition, he recently warned of the incr...

AFP: Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa announced Saturday he is seeking to definitively shut down a private television station that he accused of "espionage" on his office. The station Teleamazonas, a private broadcaster that has been critical of Correa and his government, has already been fined multiple times for breaking broadcasting law, notably for reporting opposition charges of voter fraud during April's general elections. This week the station broadcast a secretly recorded conversation between Correa and a Quito lawmaker -- seemingly the last straw for Correa, who has sought the station's closure for months. "I ask that Teleamazonas... is finally closed," Correa said on his own weekly television and radio show Saturday. "They have spied on a meeting in the office of the president -- that's an attack on national security.... We will not accept these things," said Correa. Also Saturday, Correa ordered that the pan-American Telemundo talk ...

Washington Post: The barefoot teen in the potato field acknowledged that his family of 12 still had nearly no money. They live the way they have always lived. They still work the earth with wood-handled tools six days a week to grow their own food. They sell a pig or a sheep occasionally at the market but rarely leave their cluster of mud-brick homes next to the lone dirt road along the marshy shores of Lake Titicaca. But under President Evo Morales, said 18-year-old Freddy Callisaya Mamani, something feels different about being an Indian in Bolivia. "Now we can be equal with the others," he said. "Now there should be no more discrimination." In three years, Morales has performed stunning political feats in this Andean nation, where he rose from being a coca union leader to become Bolivia's first indigenous president. He seized control of oil, mining and telecommunications companies. He cast out the American ambassador, accusing him of helping Morales...

NY Times: In the rush to build the next generation of hybrid or electric cars, a sobering fact confronts both automakers and governments seeking to lower their reliance on foreign oil: almost half of the world’s lithium, the mineral needed to power the vehicles, is found here in Bolivia — a country that may not be willing to surrender it so easily. Japanese and European companies are busily trying to strike deals to tap the resource, but a nationalist sentiment about the lithium is building quickly in the government of President Evo Morales , an ardent critic of the United States who has already nationalized Bolivia’s oil and natural gas industries. For now, the government talks of closely controlling the lithium and keeping foreigners at bay. Adding to the pressure, indigenous groups here in the remote salt desert where the mineral lies are pushing for a share in the eventual bounty. “We know that Bolivia can become the Saudi Arabia of lithium,” said Francisco Quisbert, 64, the lead...

McClatchy /Miami Herald: On a remote Andean plain here, a short drive on unpaved roads from the world's largest salt flat, 120 government workers are constructing a facility to help power the fuel-efficient electric cars of the future. The plant, in a sparsely populated region, is supposed to begin producing basic compounds of lithium, which is used to make batteries for cell phones, power tools, computers and other electronic devices, by year's end. Government officials think Bolivia possesses the world's biggest lithium reserves, and they also think the country is poised to profit big time from the automakers' push to develop electric cars that will run on lithium ion batteries. ''Bolivia will become a big producer of batteries in six years,'' Luis Alberto Echazú, the minister of mining and metallurgy, said in an interview. He ticked off three companies that he said have expressed interest in investing in the government's lithium venture: Sumitomo,...