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the 130 year old issue of Bolivia's access to the sea, in a recent accord. These two countries fought a war over it long ago. But, as is the new way in South America, these two leftist leaders settled the matter amicably, and Bolivia will get port access in northern Chile. Brazil and Venezuela--two more leftist governments--meanwhile put up the money to build a road from the Atlantic coast in Brazil all the way across the continent, through Bolivia, to the Pacific coast. Bolivia will become a major thoroughfare for the new South American "Common Market" (UNASUR).
While Evo Morales achieves huge gains for Bolivia, such as these--and, furthermore, has DOUBLED Bolivia's gas revenues, from one billion to TWO billion U.S.$/year, by nationalizing the gas resource and re-negotiating the contracts (with major customers Brazil and Argentina)--the rich white racists in the eastern provinces can't stand this good fortune benefiting Bolivia's vast poor indigenous majority (or themselves, it seems), and went on a rampage of killing, destroying government buildings, rioting and blowing up a gas pipeline, last week, supported, funded and organized by our Bushwhacks. And Morales threw the U.S. (Bush) ambassador out of Bolivia for colluding with these murderers and rioters.
The white separatists' behavior seems insane--they turned all of South America against them--except when you look at South America through Bushwhack eyes. They see oil, oil, OIL, and the only thing standing in the way of their grabbing it is democracy. Kind of weird they're doing this four months before leaving office, but I think it's reasonable to surmise that the civil war they have been stoking in Bolivia is stage one of a war plan that pretty much has the consensus of our very, very, very corrupt national political establishment and its global corporate predator masters: 1) kill democracy in Bolivia, and/or cripple the national government by the fascists grabbing Bolivia's main resource (gas), and 2) kill democracy in Bolivia's strongest allies, Venezuela and Ecuador, with basically the same model, that is, fascist secession from the national government, in the oil rich provinces (in Venezuela's case, in the state of Zulia, on the Caribbean, where the Bushwhacks recently reconstituted the U.S. 4th Fleet).
Suddenly, the white separatists crazy behavior in Bolivia starts to make sense--or, at least, to have a geopolitical purpose to it, rather than just these mad dogs running around machine-gunning peasants and burning federal buildings--and cutting off their own noses by blowing up a gas pipeline, alienating the only possible customers--Brazil and Argentina--for the gas they are trying to steal. And if I am right--and I'm pretty sure I am--stages two and three of this Bushite war plan (with Zulia, Venezuela, being the most important stage, because of its strategic location on the Caribbean) cannot likely be completed in only four months. So they must be fairly sure that whoever gets Diebolded into the White House will take this war plan to conclusion (McCain) or won't obstruct it, will look the other way (Obama) if it proceeds with private means (say, an Exxon Mobil war, orchestrated by Donald Rumsfeld, using the billions stolen from us in Iraq, mercenary armies, Colombian paramilitaries and local fascist militias). (Rumsfeld is likely involved in South America.)
This Bushwhack war will fail--because of the very strong democratic basis of the governments they are targeting, and the new unity and cooperation among South American countries--but it may cause (has already caused) some suffering and grief, and it will also likely result in the permanent alienation of the northern and southern halves of our hemisphere. South America has the oil and other resources--gas, minerals, fresh water, forests, farm lands--and well-motivated, democratically empowered workers hungry for decent jobs, which these leftist governments are bootstrapping with education, medical care and other forward-looking programs--to build a powerhouse "Common Market." With the U.S. Corpos not bleeding them dry (as they are doing to us, and have done to South America in the past), it's going to be South America's century, not ours--unless we were somehow to acquire a visionary president who would join with them on fair and just terms. The trouble is that that is not Exxon Mobil's kind of "playing field."
The key to all this is transparent vote counting. The South Americans have achieved it. We have lost it. And this is not just a symptom. It is the whole story, in my opinion. Our leaders are no longer beholden to us; they are beholden to the rightwing, Bushite Corpos who own and the control the "trade secret" programming code, in all the new electronic voting systems that were fast-tracked across the country for the 2004 and subsequent, so-called elections.
Democracy is the most stable form of government because it builds course corrections into it--by means of transparent vote counting. It is flexible. It can change, as needed. Our rightwing, Bushite-controlled TRADE SECRET vote counting system guarantees pro-corporate, pro-war public officials--in Congress, in the White House, everywhere--first of all, in the primary system as to the selection of candidates (except for the caucus states where primary votes are NOT counted by Diebold & brethren) and then in the general election. D or R, it doesn't matter. The result is the same--more corporate looting, more war. Obama is a bit of an exception--he got his jumpstart in the caucus states, in a genuine peoples' movement--but he is hedged round by the other Corpo controls--for instance, of the media, which can kill his campaign instantly, for nothing--for not wearing a flag pin. And Diebold & brethren will have total control of the vote counting in the general election. And you can see this fascist influence in his positions--for instance, he wants to move the Forever War to Afghanistan. He may wind down the war on Iraq, but war is our fate, don't you know? We must have some war, somewhere, to keep the war profiteers from whacking him (literally, or some other way--by dirty tricks, or black ops or Corpo media smears, or handing him a crashed economy). He cannot reform this country, with Diebold & brethren controlling elections.
South America--which has worked long and hard on transparent elections--now has flexible, people-oriented, democratic governments, where the leaders are actually accountable to the people. They have the resilience that we have lost. And it really does come down to transparent vote counting--as our Corpos well know.
The hope for us is that the Corpos bother to fiddle our elections--and also to propagandize our people relentlessly. This means that we inspire fear in them--and that, if we can restore transparent vote counting, change for the better will be very rapid. Transparent means that we can SEE it--the votes are counted IN PUBLIC. All the votes. Our voting system has been privatized, and we must--we simply must--get it back into the PUBLIC venue.
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Wow! I just saw the documentary "Uncounted"--and it really got me fired up. To get back to the topic at hand--an admiral made governor of Pando: the Bolivian navy is the future of Bolivia. The new road from the Atlantic to the Pacific will run through Bolivia to a port--the port access that Chile just granted. Shipping goods to and from that port, and regulating and protecting shipping, is going to become a huge project. The products trucked on that road, through Bolivia, to the port, will be coming from the Atlantic (possibly from as far away as Africa and Europe), from the vast industries of Brazil, and probably from other countries as well, and will be heading not only for western South American ports, but to all of Asia and the Pacific. Bolivia has kept its navy alive for over a hundred years, in the hope of recovering access to the sea. Now that they have it, and will have this vast new road as well, their navy is going to come into its own. They have exercised all this time on lakes. They are about to have the biggest lakes of all opened to them--the great oceans.
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