In Peru, a Rebellion Reborn

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Washington Post

In Peru, a Rebellion Reborn
Dreaded Shining Path Returns as a Drug-Financed Movement Seeking Popular Support

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 12, 2008; A12



PUKATORO, Peru -- After years in relative obscurity, the Shining Path, one of Latin America's most notorious guerrilla groups, is fighting the Peruvian military with renewed vigor, feeding on the profits of the cocaine trade and trying to win support from the Andean villagers it once terrorized, according to residents and Peruvian officials.

The Shining Path's reemergence has stirred chilling memories of its blood-soaked forays of decades past. In October, Shining Path guerrillas killed more people -- 17 soldiers and five civilians -- than they have in any month since the 1990s. This rising death toll is largely attributed to a fresh offensive by the Peruvian military, launched under the same president who battled them in the 1980s, to try to destroy the remnants of the once almost forgotten communist rebel group.

But those who live among them, as well as those who study the secretive group, also describe other reasons for their resurgence. The Shining Path, which has its bases in two coca-producing regions of central Peru, is now heavily involved in drug trafficking and is paying for new recruits.

Experts said the guerrillas have renounced the brutal tactics espoused by their original leader, Abimael Guzmán, who was captured in 1992. Unlike Guzmán, who said 10 percent of the Peruvian population had to be assassinated for the Shining Path to take power, the new leaders tell their followers they must protect the villagers and instead target the military and anti-drug authorities.

In numbers, the guerrillas' ranks remain a fraction of their former size: 400 to 700 full-time fighters in the branch that insists on armed struggle, according to various estimates; in the low thousands if offshoots that call for more-peaceful political revolution are included. In ideology, they appear to have abandoned the strict Maoism that Guzmán preached and to have adopted a muddled form of communism that welcomes foreign investment and large international mining companies, among others, provided they treat their workers well.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/11/AR2008111102867.html?nav=rss_world

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http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/media/images/41725000/jpg/_41725760_perugarcia1_ap416.jpg

http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/05L06K39lj16d/610x.jpg

http://www.elmorsa.com.nyud.net:8090/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/alan_garcia_1.jpg

Peru's suave President, Alan Garcia

[Peace Patriot]

1. Just two things to say about this situation...

1. Peru, with Garcia as president, is one of only two friends of the Bush Junta in South America.

2. Wherever the U.S. "war on drugs" goes, there violence and MORE cocaine trafficking follows. Witness Colombia and Peru, the number one and number two top cocaine producers in South America. And the reverse seems to be true as well--where the government kicks the U.S. "war on drugs" out, as in Bolivia, cocaine production goes down, due to the efforts of the government and also indigenous coca leaf farmers (a different product than cocaine--mere coca leaves are an indigenous medicine, and the coca leaf farmers have no love for the cocaine drug lords).

Put two and two together--a Bush-friendly, corrupt president of Peru, with the rich benefiting from a U.S. 'free trade' deal, and the poor being harmed, and U.S. militarization via the "war on drugs," and you get an armed insurgency among the desperate poor, who are excluded from power, and motivated by poverty and brutal injustice.

Same thing in Colombia.

And, lo and behold, in all the countries with leftist governments, where the poor have hope, and where the governments are, at long last, providing varying degrees of services to the poor (depending on how left they are), and where the governments are either outright rejecting, or at least mitigating U.S.'neoliberal' economic policies, there is peace.

Where there is hope, there is peace. Where U.S. domination is rejected or minimized, there is peace.

Is it any wonder that most of South America is rejecting U.S. militarization and economic domination? Is it any wonder that Alan Garcia has a 20% approval rating, like Bush, and will soon be ousted? Is it any wonder that the only thing propping up the fascist, murderous, drug-trafficking government of Colombia (where democratic change is much less possible than in Peru) is $6 BILLION in military aide from the Bush Junta?

Will the Obama administration make this situation in Peru and Colombia worse, by pouring the gasoline of MORE U.S. military aid, and MORE of the corrupt, failed, murderous "war on drugs," and MORE "free trade" for the rich, on the fire of terrible poverty?

Or will it be wise, and listen to the majority in South America, and stop these terrible policies, and support the governments that are DOING SOMETHING FOR THE POOR?

And here they are, in order of BEST leftist governments (most democratic and responsive to the poor majority)?

1. Venezuela
2. Bolivia
3. Ecuador
4. Argentina
5. Uruguay
6. Paraguay
7. Brazil
8. Chile

The outliers, the worst goverments in South America:

1. Colombia
2. Peru

Which of these governments has leftist guerrillas? Natch, the two with the MOST U.S. interference.

[n2doc]

2. One can only hope Obama changes the US support there

Agree Garcia is crap. Unfortunately the SP was really, really bad in its heyday, and I pray that they do not return to those ways. There has to be another way to redress the inequalities there other than by the barrel of a gun.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Yes, I think Peru has enough of a democracy to oust Garcia, and elect a leftist

who will work cooperatively with the many new leftist governments of the continent, in their new institution UNASUR (South American "Common Market"), and other regional ventures. Peru, with its large indigenous and campesino populations, and with other affinities, should be closely allied with the leftist governments of Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador and Venezuela, that is, with the Bolivarian Revolution. Garcia is greatly retarding their progress toward a more equitable, more socially just, and, in the end, more prosperous country for most of its inhabitants. His unsustainable model is much like Venezuela's prior to Chavez--creation of a well-off urban middle/upper class addicted to imported products and imported culture, and serving corporate interests, while the rest of the country receives no benefit--no improvement in education, health care, wages, infrastructure, nor important general national needs like food self-sufficiency and local manufacturing--and the majority falls further into poverty. Venezuela's rightwing governments based this artificial urban culture on oil, which took its portion of profit but gave away 90% to multinationals, and utterly neglected their own country--as to education, infrastructure, local manufacturing, food self sufficiency, etc. They lived high; they did nothing for their fellow countrymen or for the future (in an economy that badly needed diversification, and strengthening of the base of an educated work force). Peru is making the same mistake, and basing it on U.S.-dominated "free trade" and the exploitation of resources. It is a very bad model and it will fail--is failing.

It is no surprise to me that a leftist guerrilla insurgency has come back in Peru. The Garcia government is brutally repressing the labor movement in the mines and elsewhere. Injustice and brutality invite a violent response, and meanwhile the Bushwhacks have been pouring in military aid which, just as in Colombia, is used for repression, including "war on drugs" repression (for instance, toxic pesticide spraying of small peasant farmers for growing traditional coca leaves). Peru is the number two producer of cocaine, after Colombia. In countries which have rejected the U.S. "war on drugs," and take a saner approach to coca leave production and use, like Bolivia, cocaine production is falling, and interdiction is improving. Nobody likes this hard drug nor the drug lords, gangs and crime that accompanies its illicit production and export. But the U.S. "war on drugs" has TOTALLY FAILED to make a dent in the cocaine traffic. Only where efforts to reduce poverty are going forward, and where sane drug policies prevail, is progress being made.

Colombia is hopeless situation. I don't know what will happen there. But there is still hope that Peru can turn things around, before it becomes a narco state with a fascist government like Colombia's, where corporations like Chiquita pay rightwing death squads to murder thousands of labor leaders and union members.

Note: The president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, is a former coca leaf farmer and remains head of the coca leaf farmers' union. He has a nearly 70% approval rating for many reasons, among them his rejection of the U.S. "war on drugs," which, in Bushwhack hands, was merely cover for funding and organizing a fascist coup attempt earlier this year--which Morales survived, with the unanimous backing of UNASUR, including Bolivia's most important trading partners, Brazil and Argentina. But Peru and the Garcia government were notably absent from that meeting (and were possibly complicit with the fascist rioters and murderers in Bolivia, and the U.S./Bushwhacks who were behind it).

[burrowowl]

4. AMEN!

[pork medley]

5. is shining path still supported by the RCP

[struggle4progress]

6. The style of writing is very illuminating: "according to residents and Peruvian officials,"

"those who live among them, as well as those who study the secretive group," "Experts said," "according to various estimates," "Peruvian officials," "one Shining Path analyst," and so on

Sendero Luminoso was an extremely violent group lacking a coherent analysis, which targeted everyone who did not whole-hearted support them. As a result, the Peruvian state (itself also responsible for extreme violence during the Sendero period) was able to organize a number of anti-Sendero groups in peasant communities; and such groups, which did not always carefully identify their targets, were also responsible for violence during the Sendero period. Given the unpleasant history of the period, which almost everyone in Peru must remember unhappily, it seems very unlikely that Sendero could successfully re-emerge

The article provides a strange portrait of armed drug-runners who lecture mining guards about the importance of fair wages and safe working conditions. I do not know whether this is, in fact, true -- but it seems unlikely. History suggests that drug-runners typically favor unrestrained capitalism. From a British war to open China to the opium traders, through the alcohol smugglers of the Capone era, to the modern Colombian narco-mafia allied closely with Uribe (and once honored in the 1980s on the cover of Fortune magazine), drug-smugglers have usually been much more interested their riches and power than in establishing a workers' paradise

Doe Run, of course, is causing major problems in Peru:

Polluting U.S. Owned Smelter in Peru Brought Before OAS

LIMA, Peru, March 23, 2007 (ENS) - The Peruvian government has done too little to halt contamination from a multi-metal smelter that is The Peruvian government has done too little to halt contamination from a multi-metal smelter that is causing health problems in La Oroya, a mining town in the Peruvian Andes, according to four public health and environmental organizations in Peru, Argentina and the United States.

The organizations have filed a petition with the Human Rights Division of the Organization of American States in Washington, DC seeking a recommendation that "the Peruvian government implement urgent measures to halt the grave violations against the health and lives of the citizens of La Oroya" ...

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2007/2007-03-23-02.asp

06 06 07
Peruvian Religious Leaders Implore Doe Run Owner Ira Rennert to Help Thousands of Lead-Poisoned Children in La Oroya, Peru
Doe Run and Renco Corporation Refuse to Meet

June 6, 2007. A group of Peru’s leading religious leaders will meet next Friday with the president of Doe Run Peru (DRP) to propose an ethical solution to the health crisis in La Oroya and to prevent further contamination of Peru’s Mantaro River Valley.
Contamination produced by DRP operations has had a negative impact on the health of thousands of children and pregnant women who live near the company’s smelter in La Oroya.

The meeting marks the first stop in an unprecedented international, interfaith pilgrimage to St. Louis, MO and later to New York to implore Doe Run owner, Ira Rennert, to invest in the proper technology to update company operations in Peru. The DRP smelter emits more than 2 million pounds of sulfur dioxide, lead, arsenic, and other toxins every day. Doe Run Resources Company profits in 2006 were between $125-150 million, according to company documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Rennert, apart from making large donations to religious and charitable causes, finances the Torah Ethics Project which promotes ethical values in the U.S. Jewish community.

Among those attending the meeting with the Doe Run Peru president, Juan Carlos Huyhua, are Monsignor Pedro Barreto, the archbishop of Huancayo and coordinator of the State of Junín Roundtable on Environmental Concerns; Rev. Rafael Goto, the president of the National Council of Protestant Churches of Peru; Sister Adele Human, a Dominican Sister; and Rev. Pedro Bullón, the president of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Peru. “Given the $150 million profit of the Doe Run Company last year, Mr. Rennert has the opportunity to significantly reduce contamination, thereby improving the health of thousands of children and families,” said Monsignor Barreto, leader of the religious delegation. Msgr. Barreto added, “The purpose of our meeting today with Dr. Huyhua is to inform him of our trip to the United States to meet with Mr. Rennert, who is precisely the person who can do the most to help solve the current crisis.”

In spite of numerous civil suits, fines, and a decision by Peru’s Constitutional Tribunal last May, DRP’s lead, arsenic and sulphuric acid emissions have actually increased in the last two years, according to a report published last week by LABOR, a Peruvian non-profit group. But even if DRP complied with Peru’s relatively lax air quality standards, a study by Dr. Perry Gottsfeld of Occupational Knowledge International shows that by 2011, Doe Run arsenic and lead emissions in La Oroya will still be 1245 and 11 times, respectively, that of its smelter in Herculaneum, Missouri. “This is why we are appealing to Mr. Rennert as a man of religious conviction”, noted CONEP President Rafael Goto. “He is widely known as a pious believer and philanthropist” ...

http://www.manosperu.org/leer.php/132

Doe Run Smelter in Peru Loses Environmental Certification
Children living near smelter contaminated with high levels of lead
April 9, 2008

Lima, Peru -- Doe Run Peru, which operates one of the largest metal-smelters in the western hemisphere, has lost its Environmental Certification in a highly unusual move taken by the company's independent third-party auditors. TUV Rheinland initially granted the certification less than two years ago, but revoked it March 11, 2008 citing non-compliance with Peruvian environmental laws and the lack of adequate pollution prevention measures.

The loss of the certification comes on the heels of a $234,000 US fine imposed last year against Doe Run Peru for several serious violations of environmental laws in Peru. This week, Peruvian authorities released a report detailing those violations, including noncompliance with the standards for lead and particulate matter.

Doe Run Peru obtained the environmental certification under ISO 14001 in 2006 calling it a "significant milestone in delivering on our commitments to our communities, our employees and the environment." The Doe Run Company's web site calls the ISO certification an "internationally recognized symbol of a company's dedication to superior quality, customer satisfaction and continuous improvement."

Nevertheless, a number of studies conducted by the government as well as international health experts have shown that almost all of the children living in the area surrounding Doe Run Peru's smelter have unacceptably high levels of lead in their bodies. Many are severely exposed and require immediate medical treatment ...

http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/2008/doe-run-smelter-in-peru-loses-enviornmental-certification.html

Workers strike at Peru's Doe Run smelter facility
Sat Apr 5, 2008 1:25pm EDT

LIMA (Reuters) - Workers went on strike to demand a share of profits and better working conditions at Peru's La Oroya smelter and metallurgical facility on Saturday, but the U.S.-owned company said it was premature to discuss the impact on output.

The facility, some 108 miles east of the capital Lima, processes iron, zinc, copper, silver and gold.

"We are on strike," said Anibal Carhuapoma, secretary general of the La Oroya metallurgical workers union. "There are 1,500 of us in the streets of La Oroya at this moment" ...

http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSMOL56268420080405

The small raid upon a Doe Run mining camp last month, by a group of uncertain identity, resulting in the theft of some supplies and a lecture on treating workers well, is no doubt a crime, but it seems petty compared to the poisonous criminal activities of Doe Run in Peru. Doe Run, of course, will prefer for the corporate media to cover the raid, rather than the extensive complaints against the company. Given the isolated location, reports are limited, but the described raiders don't really resemble Guzman's Sendero

[Judi Lynn]

7. More on that Doe Run smelter in La Oroya, Peru, and its American owner, Ira Rennert:

PERU: Pollution Emergency Plan Instead of Real Action for La Oroya
By Milagros Salazar

LIMA, Aug 10 (Tierramérica) - Far from halting the source that is poisoning the Andean city of La Oroya, which is home to the Doe Run smelting complex, the Peruvian government ordered a contingency plan for the days when air pollution is worst, as if it were dealing with a natural disaster.

The Contingency Plan for States of Alert will be presented Aug. 10 by the government's national environmental council, CONAM, which approved it Jul. 18 to protect the 35,000 inhabitants of La Oroya from the sulphur dioxide, lead and cadmium emissions from the Doe Run smokestacks.

The plan is the result of two years of debates involving citizen groups, non-governmental organisations and the state agencies in charge of carrying it out, as well as representatives of the company, which will provide much of the financing.

La Oroya, 180 kilometres east of Lima, is one of the country's 13 most polluted cities, the government said in 2001. The New York-based Blacksmith Institute in 2006 included it in a list of the 10 worst cases in the world.
(snip)

Once a state of alert is ordered, it will be recommended that the most vulnerable -- children, pregnant women, the elderly and people with respiratory or cardiovascular illnesses -- should not be outdoors between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm local time, the worst period of the day for exposure.

Doors and windows of homes, schools and hospitals should be closed, and food sold on the street should be covered.

The population in general should cover mouth and nose with scarves and handkerchiefs when outside. The idea of facemasks was ruled out because "people don't want images that further dramatise the situation," said Rojas.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38854







The book cover says, "There is a place in the world
where birds do not fly, where trees and children do
not grow, where lead is the bread each day ...."

Toxic clouds hang over Peruvian town
U.S. company bought mine tied to poisonings
By Rebecca Howard



Updated: 9:52 a.m. CT Feb 9, 2004
LA OROYA, Peru - Standing outside his adobe house overlooking the huge American-owned smelter in this small Andean town, Pablo Fabian watches children play beneath a smoke cloud containing toxic lead, sulfur dioxide, cadmium and arsenic.

His hands tremble when he talks about his own children. Two of them are lethargic and have trouble concentrating, symptoms of lead poisoning. Fabian blames the smelter and is determined to protect his newborn baby girl.
(snip)

Those findings led to a deal between Doe Run and Missouri’s government requiring the company to offer to buy 160 nearby homes. The buyout, which has yet to be completed, is one factor that may have helped drop the percentage of children with high levels of lead to 17 percent last year.

Leslie Warden, a leader in a Herculaneum activist group, visited last year to see Doe Run operations in Peru.

“They have defined a new low in my mind,” she said after her stay in La Oroya.
(snip/)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4145692 /


Poisoned city fights to save its children
Families in a Peruvian valley choked by toxic gas from a smelter are taking on a US metals giant

Hugh O'Shaughnessy in La Oroya, Peru
Sunday August 12, 2007



Children wearing masks play near the towering chimneys
of Peru's La Oroya refinery and metals processing
plant. Photograph: Reuters

At an altitude of 13,000ft the Andean air is clear. A plume of white smoke rises from the chimney at the La Oroya smelter, hard at work refining arsenic and metals such as lead, cadmium and copper. But today the company is not discharging any gases over this city in central Peru. 'It's a nice day, so the company won't be letting off any gases,' says Hugo Villa, a neurologist at the local hospital. 'They keep the worst emissions to overcast days or after dark.'

When the gases are released, they make this one of the most polluted places on the planet, with La Oroya ranking alongside Chernobyl for environmental devastation, according to a US think-tank, the Blacksmith Institute.

The company is a US corporation, Renco Doe Run. The gases are the product from the main smelter a mile or two down the valley. The high mountains around keep out the cleansing winds, meaning that airborne metals are concentrated in the valley. Neither humans nor nature can escape the company's outpourings of poisons. And, despite evidence that gases have been behind the premature deaths of workers and residents young and old, the business-oriented, pro-US government of President Alan Garcia is too afraid of foreign investors to do anything about it.

Now, however, the townspeople, once muted by their worries about losing their jobs with the valley's biggest employer, are turning their attention towards Ira Rennert, Renco's proprietor.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/aug/12/environment.pollution



Ira Rennert and wife, on the left







The billionaire found of the Renco Group, Ira Rennert, owns a place in Sagaponack, New York, and at 63 acres of grounds, is considered by many to be the largest residential compound in the whole of America. The house itself has 29 bedrooms, 39 bathrooms, as well as the usual gigantic dining room, sport courts and bowling alley. The property is valued at roughly $170,000,000-180,000,000.

Big Deal! Big-Hearted Baron Ira Rennert Buys Daughters Spreads in 740 Park, 778 Park for $60 M.-Plus
by Max Abelson | 7:06 PM January 22, 2008
This article was published in the January 28, 2008, edition of The New York Observer.

Brooklyn-born Ira Rennert has an oceanic $185 million Hamptons compound, a few infamous smelting plants in Peru and Missouri, and a billion-dollar fortune from junk bonds and Hummer vehicles.

~snip~
Mr. Rennert, meanwhile, has his own multiunit spread nearby at 625 Park Avenue, plus his 63-acre oceanfront property—“the largest home in America,” The New York Times wrote in 1998. He’s also been known for a different kind of excess: According to a 2003 BusinessWeek article, the E.P.A. has ranked his Renco Group—a conglomerate based on mining and smelting—as the country’s 10th-biggest polluter.

http://www.observer.com/2008/big-deal-big-hearted-baron-ira-rennert-buys-daughters-spreads-740-park-778-park-60-m-plus

McCain, Giulianni, Lieberman campaign contributions:
http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=name&lname=Rennert&fname=Ira


Ira Rennert Contribution List in 2008
http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/ira-rennert.asp?cycle=08





Sweet dreams, Ira Rennert



Ira Rennert is an American Billionaire industrialist with a long, documented track record of severe environmental abuses in the United States. Government agencies have called him America's "worst private polluter". Now Ira is doing the same thing in Peru.

In 1997 Ira created the Doe Run Peru company when he bought the mining smelter in La Oroya for a bargain basement price on the condition he drastically reduces its toxic emissions. But he hasn’t. It’s so bad that for the second year in a row La Oroya has made it to a top ten list, ranking alongside Chernobyl, as one of the World's Worst Polluted Places.

Trapped in the narrow mountain canyons the 2,000,000 pounds a day of pollution literally creates a gas chamber for La Oroya’s population causing irreversible brain damage, cancer, and even death. The contamination is so rampant that over 99% of the 12,000 children living there have lead poisoning....

~snip~
Ten years have past and Ira Rennert has yet to fulfill his environmental promises, claiming a lack of profits. During this same period his companies have siphoned off over 100 million dollars in “fees” which he used to help build a huge palace with 29 bedrooms and 39 bathrooms – making it one of the largest houses in the world.


Exposure to lead is shown to cause anemia, high blood pressure, developmental delays, behavioral problems, decreased intelligence, central nervous system damage, and even death. For the second year in a row La Oroya has been named one of the top ten World's Worst Polluted Places, alongside such infamous catastrophes as Chernobyl.

The Peruvian government is afraid of cracking down on Ira Rennert, fearing it may scare off other foreign investments. But this inaction only encourages more abuse by international corporations. One of the first responsibilities of any government is to protect the health of its citizens. Help us convince this government to do the right thing.

More:
http://savelaoroya.org/

Video:
"House of Lead: A story of greed" - La Oroya, Peru
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpwu8DOmzoU

More videos on Doe Run smelter, La Oroya, Peru:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=La+Oroya+Peru&search_type=&aq=f

[Peace Patriot]

8. Thank you, Judi, for this amazing documentation! There's U.S. "free trade" in a nutshell!

Freedom to pollute. Freedom to damage and kill children. Freedom to steal resources. Freedom to throw your weight around, and buy or steal elections. Freedom to flush your toilet into the water and air that poor peasants and workers have no choice but to use. Freedom for the super-rich. Impoverishment, slavery and slow deaths from pollution for the rest of humanity.

The worst-case scenario for this kind of behavior is the "free trade" that the Bushwhacks (and, unfortunately, the Clintonites) want to reward Colombia with, for its thousands of outright murders of union leaders and other workers and peasant farmers (also human rights workers, political leftists and journalists). Unbelievable, unthinkable, but there you are. "Free trade" for the rich, the brutal, the murderous and the drug traffickers running Colombia.

But even the somewhat less violent U.S. "free trade"--combined with other 'neoliberal' policies (ruinous World Bank/IMF loans, for instance; drastic cuts in all services--education, medical care, etc.) all over South America, in Central America, in Asia and other places, over the last decade, has been absolutely devastating to the poor and lower middle class, as well as to the environment, and has sent entire countries over the cliff into total economic meltdown and social chaos, such as Argentina. The remedy in South America has been cooperation among the countries hit by the "hit men," for instance, Venezuela's easy terms loans and bartering deals with Argentina, which put Argentina back on the road to recovery, and has helped to insulate some S/A countries from the immediate shocks of the Financial 9/11 just engineered by the Bushwhacks.

Now the Bushwhacks (and the Clintonites) have done an outstanding job at creating the biggest "banana republic" on earth: us!

Unfortunately--and no doubt in part due to 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting, by Bushwhack electronic voting corps--at least half the Democrats in Congress are in thrall to this program of total looting of the poor to benefit the rich. We saw it in California, early in the Bush Junta, with Texas energy corps (including Enron) outright looting California's $80 billion surplus--aided by the Democrats, who bought into de-regulation. California now has a $300 billion deficit, and will be laying off teachers, nurses, firefighters, paramedics, cutting pensions, cutting medical care for the poor, harming children and the elderly, destroying the middle class, and also cutting agencies that regulate corporations. Everything that makes a good society is in danger in California and of course in the U.S. generally. This is "free trade." There is nothing "free" about it. It is LOOTING. It is CRIMINAL. It is PIRACY. And we need to get a clue from all the new leftist governments in South America what to do about it: a) TRANSPARENT vote counting; b) band together to fight off the global corporate predators who are bleeding humanity of its resilience, and are sending the very planet we live on, that sustains us, over the cliff to environmental meltdown.