Bolivia begins military training for civilians

[Judi Lynn]

Bolivia begins military training for civilians
By CARLOS VALDEZ
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 5, 2010; 6:49 PM

LA PAZ, Bolivia -- Bolivia's leftist government said Thursday it has begun military training for civilians at army barracks in what the opposition called a first step toward creating pro-government militias.

Weapons instruction and physical training began on Monday for hundreds at military bases in Bolivia's east, a stronghold of the pro-business opposition, and army officials said it would extend to all bases.

The program is reminiscent of one that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez launched in his country after a failed 2002 coup attempt that he blamed on the United States. Venezuela claims it has 120,000 participants.

Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales are close allies.

Questions about the Bolivian training arose after a TV station broadcast images Thursday of young men armed with rifles taking target practice at a base in the eastern provincial capital of Santa Cruz. Also seen in the video were indigenous women in their 20s and 30s in billowing skirts and bowler hats doing calisthenics.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/05/AR2010080506279.html

[naaman fletcher]

1. as a progressive I think militarism is a bad thing.

Hopefully you all agree with me.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Oh, for sure. That American Revolution was horrible! Must burn your "progressive" butt but good.

http://www.thatshirtplace.com.nyud.net:8090/uploaded/images/1Funny/SarcasmBeatsKilling.jpg

[naaman fletcher]

4. Glad to see you are a militarist, it explains a lot.

by all means, arm and train everyone in military fighting. that is yours and chavez's way.

[Judi Lynn]

5. You dont' see that. Keep your poison to yourself.

We believe the U.S. has to stay out of Latin America interior affairs overtly, and covertly. Period.

[naaman fletcher]

6. you believe in militarising civilians..

maybe you should teach at SOA

[Judi Lynn]

7. SOA teaches SOLDIERS to prey upon civilians, to torture, kidnap, murder, to use propaganda,

to overthrow leftist leaders.

The School of the Americas, at Ft. Benning, Georgia works with SOLDIERS, not civilians. Their graduates MURDER civilians.

[naaman fletcher]

10. Go ahead and put guns into the hands of more people

That's apparently your solution to the problems in LA.

[Judi Lynn]

3. They'll need domestic strength to fight off outside dirtball agression.

Those of us who've paid attention are more than aware of it.

As a refresher, it never hurts to point out what happened when _Bush and Rumsfeld decided to move once they realized Evo Morales was going to win the next election by a landslide. This was their first anti-Bolivian act BEFORE he took office:

Bolivia's Defense Chiefs Ousted in Missile Scandal
Reuters
Wednesday, January 18, 2006; Page A11

LA PAZ, Bolivia, Jan. 18 -- A scandal in Bolivia over surface-to-air missiles prompted the defense minister's resignation and the army chief's dismissal Tuesday, plunging the military into a political crisis days before socialist president-elect Evo Morales is to be sworn into office.

The outgoing interim president, Eduardo Rodriguez, said he had accepted the resignation of Defense Minister Gonzalo Mendez, and fired Gen. Marcelo Antezana over apparent irregularities in the destruction in the United States of a batch of Chinese-made missiles in October.

"I have relieved the commander of the army of his duties and accepted the defense minister's resignation," Rodriguez told reporters after a cabinet meeting Tuesday.

At the height of campaigning for last month's presidential elections, Morales denounced the destruction of the 28 to 30 Chinese HN-5 shoulder-fired missiles, the only arms of their kind in the military's arsenal.

Antezana, the army chief, told reporters that Washington initiated the drive to destroy the missiles because it feared Morales would win the presidency of the South American country.More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/18/AR2006011800124.html

~~~~~
23 December 2005
Evo Morales faces his first problem: what happened to Bolivia's air defence missiles?
President-Elect Evo Morales of Bolivia met the outgoing President Eduardo Rodriguez to discuss the handover of power yesterday. However, the new President faces a problem with the USA even before taking office. Put simply, what happened to Bolivia's air-defence missiles?

The country had 28 or 30 Chinese built HN-SA hand-held anti-aircraft missiles that seem to have vanished from the military's arsenal. By all accounts they were stolen by the American Embassy with the conivence of Bolivian military officers, during May or June of this year. It is reported that they were taken aboard an unmarked C-130 transport aircraft and removed from the country.

When Evo Morales first made these allegations last month, the Bolivian army claimed that the missiles had been disposed of as part of an "annual disposal of obsolete equipment," and the army also claimed that the weapons were still in the country. However, army reports which were released this month show that the missiles, which cost Bolivia about £1,000,000, were well-maintained and had ten more years of service left in them.
More:
http://www.the-exile.info/2005_12_01_archive.html

~~~~~
Bolivian army chief fired over missile flap
Chinese-made, shoulder-fired weapons were sent to U.S. for destruction

MSNBC News Services
updated 8:49 a.m. CT, Wed., Jan. 18, 2006
LA PAZ, Bolivia - Outgoing President Eduardo Rodriguez fired Bolivia’s army chief on Tuesday over his decision to have 28 Chinese shoulder-launched missiles destroyed in the United States.

Gen. Marcelo Antezana later appeared on Bolivian television to say Rodriguez had made a “bad interpretation” of his role in the October destruction of the missiles, which led to accusations of treason by Evo Morales, then a presidential candidate.

Morales — who later won elections in December — revealed the destruction of the missiles by the United States and said it had left Bolivia with almost no air defense.

~snip~
On Tuesday, government news agency ABI reported that Rodriguez would make a formal inquiry with the U.S. Embassy to investigate their role in the matter.

More:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10774121 /

~~~~~
Friday, August 18, 2006 - Page updated at 12:50 AM
Ex-leader wants U.S. to clarify his role

La Paz, Bolivia
Bolivia's former president says Washington is refusing to clarify that he had nothing to do with the secret removal of anti-aircraft missiles to U.S. soil, an incident that has him facing treason charges under the new leftist government.

"They ought not to be leaving us hanging," said Eduardo Rodriguez, a former Supreme Court chief who stepped in as caretaker president last year after two Bolivian leaders were ousted by protests. He organized December elections won by the leftist Evo Morales.

Twenty-eight Chinese-made shoulder-fired missiles — Bolivia's lone anti-aircraft defenses — were spirited out of the country in early October by senior Bolivian military officials and American officials, according to documents provided by Rodriguez. Rodriguez said he learned about the operation only later, and protested it, but Morales has used the U.S. action to discredit one of his chief potential rivals.

More:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003207314_wdig18.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/media/images/40609000/jpg/_40609356_victory_ap220.jpg

Eduardo Rodriguez
~~~~~
Bush Spending U.S. Tax Dollars to Foment Unrest in Bolivia
By Benjamin Dangl, The Progressive. Posted March 10, 2008.

Documents show that Washington is backing Right-wing opposition to Bolivia's democratic reforms.

~snip~
From the Bush Administration's perspective, that turns out to mean Morales's opponents. Declassified documents and interviews on the ground in Bolivia prove that the Bush Administration is using U.S. taxpayers' money to undermine the Morales government and coopt the country's dynamic social movements--just as it has tried to do recently in Venezuela and traditionally throughout Latin America.

Much of that money is going through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In July 2002, a declassified message from the U.S. embassy in Bolivia to Washington included the following message: "A planned USAID political party reform project aims at implementing an existing Bolivian law that would . . . over the long run, help build moderate, pro-democracy political parties that can serve as a counterweight to the radical MAS or its successors." MAS refers to Morales's party, which, in English, stands for Movement Toward Socialism.

Morales won the presidency in December 2005 with 54 percent of the vote, but five regional governments went to rightwing politicians. After Morales's victory, USAID, through its Office of Transition Initiatives, decided "to provide support to fledgling regional governments," USAID documents reveal.

Throughout 2006, four of these five resource-rich lowland departments pushed for greater autonomy from the Morales-led central government, often threatening to secede from the nation. U.S. funds have emboldened them, with the Office of Transition Initiatives funneling "116 grants for $4,451,249 to help departmental governments operate more strategically," the documents state.

"USAID helps with the process of decentralization," says Jose Carvallo, a press spokesperson for the main rightwing opposition political party, Democratic and Social Power. "They help with improving democracy in Bolivia through seminars and courses to discuss issues of autonomy."

"The U.S. Embassy is helping this opposition," agrees Raul Prada, who works for Morales's party. Prada is sitting down in a crowded La Paz cafe and eating ice cream. His upper lip is black and blue from a beating he received at the hands of Morales's opponents while Prada was working on the new constitutional assembly. "The ice cream is to lessen the swelling," he explains. The Morales government organized this constitutional assembly to redistribute wealth from natural resources and guarantee broader access to education, land, water, gas, electricity, and health care for the country's poor majority. I had seen Prada in the early days of the Morales administration. He was wearing an indigenous wiphala flag pin and happily chewing coca leaves in his government office. This time, he wasn't as hopeful. He took another scoop of ice cream and continued: "USAID is in Santa Cruz and other departments to help fund and strengthen the infrastructure of the rightwing governors."

In August 2007, Morales told a diplomatic gathering in La Paz, "I cannot understand how some ambassadors dedicate themselves to politics, and not diplomacy, in our country. . . . That is not called cooperation. That is called conspiracy." Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera said that the U.S. Embassy was funding the government's political opponents in an effort to develop "ideological and political resistance." One example is USAID's financing of Juan Carlos Urenda, an adviser to the rightwing Civic Committee, and author of the Autonomy Statute, a plan for Santa Cruz's secession from Bolivia.
More:
http://www.alternet.org/audits/77572 /

[ChangoLoa]

8. >They have the army for that and the executive branch can clean it from its supposed

"internal enemies". So that's not the reason for the militias.

Btw, twenty-eight Chinese-made shoulder-fired missiles can't stop (or even delay) an invasion with modern airplanes.

[ChangoLoa]

9. What happens if a non revolutionary party wins the next election?

And decides, logically, to eliminate the militias? They give back their weapons and wait for the next election? Yes, right...