Signal Lost: RT to be Booted out of Bolivia!

RT Spanish broadcasts in Bolivia will be terminated starting next week, the country’ leading private TV operator has announced without a prior notice or clear explanation, citing only orders from its administration.

Cotas, a non-governmental operator and the leader in the Bolivian paid television market, sent a notice to RT on Wednesday that the Spanish service would be taken off air on December 2.

“This is a decision taken by the company’s administration, which tasked us with shutting down the channel’s broadcast,” said the statement, without going into any other details.

It’s unclear if the move was the initiative of the company’s management or if there was any pressure from the government in La Paz that came to power after ousting President Evo Morales in a military-backed coup earlier this month.

The new government, led by conservative Senator Jeanine Anez, has been facing large-scale protests by supporters of Morales, whose party still has the parliamentary majority. More than 30 people were killed in clashes with police and the military so far. The government warned politicians from Morales's party, Movement to Socialism, against “disloyalty” to the new authorities - while threatening journalists not to engage in what the new communications minister called “sedition.”

“There’s no freedom of expression nor freedom of press in the country, but there’s prosecution of some leaders, murders, yet there are no culprits found,” former Vice President of Bolivia Álvaro García Linera told RT.

RT.

John Pilger on Assange's show trial...

The Morals of Evo Morales

The country's citizens rose up having been forced into becoming the silent majority, officials in Bolivia are in danger of letting history repeat itself

By Slavoj Zizek (H/T FarmersLetters)

Although I am for over a decade a staunch supporter of Evo Morales, I must admit that, after reading about the confusion after Morales’ disputed electoral victory, I was beset by doubts: did he also succumb to the authoritarian temptation, as it happened to so many radical Leftists in power? However, after a day or two, things became clear.

Brandishing a giant leather-bound bible and declaring herself Bolivia’s interim president, Jeanine Añez, the second-vice president of the country’s Senate, declared: “The Bible has returned to the government palace.” She added: “We want to be a democratic tool of inclusion and unity” – and the transitional cabinet sworn into office did not include a single indigenous person.

This tells it all: although the majority of the population of Bolivia are indigenous or mixed, they were till the rise of Morales de facto excluded from political life, reduced to the silent majority. What happened with Morales was the political awakening of this silent majority which did not fit in the network of capitalist relations.

They were not yet proletarian in the modern sense, they remained locked into their premodern tribal social identities – here is how Alvaro Garcia Linera, Morales’ vice-president, described their lot: “In Bolivia, food was produced by Indigenous farmers, buildings and houses were built by Indigenous workers, streets were cleaned by Indigenous people, and the elite and the middle classes entrusted the care of their children to them. Yet the traditional left seemed oblivious to this and occupied itself only with workers in large-scale industry, paying no attention to their ethnic identity.”

To understand them, we should bring into picture the entire historical weight of their predicament: they are the survivors of perhaps the greatest holocaust in the history of humanity, the obliteration of the indigenous communities by the Spanish and English colonisation of the Americas.

The religious expression of their premodern status is the unique combination of Catholicism and belief in the Pachamama or Mother Earth figure. This is why, although Morales stated that he is a Catholic, in the current Bolivian Constitution (enacted in 2009) the Roman Catholic church lost its official status – its article 4 states: “The State respects and guarantees the freedom of religion and spiritual beliefs, in accordance to every individual’s world view. The State is independent from religion.”

And it is against this affirmation of indigenous culture that Anez’s display of the bible is directed – the message is clear: an open assertion of white religious supremacism, and a no less open attempt to put the silent majority back to their proper subordinate place. From his Mexican exile, Morales already appealed to Pope to intervene, and the Pope’s reaction will tell us a lot. Will Francis react as a true Christian and unambiguously reject the enforced re-Catholisation of Bolivia as what it is, as a political power-play which betrays the emancipatory core of Christianity?

If we leave aside any possible role of lithium in the coup (Bolivia has big reserves of lithium which is needed for batteries in electric cars and it has featured in a number of theories about what brought down Morales), the big question is: why is for over a decade Bolivia such a thorn in the flesh of Western liberal establishment? The reason is a very peculiar one: the surprising fact that the political awakening of premodern tribalism in Bolivia did not result in a new version of the Sendero Luminoso or Khmer Rouge horror show. The reign of Morales was not the usual story of the radical Left in power which screws things up, economically and politically, generating poverty and trying to maintain its power through authoritarian measures. A proof of the non-authoritarian character of the Morales reign is that he didn’t purge army and police of his opponents (which is why they turned against him).

Morales and his followers were, of course, not perfect, they made mistakes, there were conflicts of interests in his movement. However, the overall balance is an outstanding one. Morales not Chavez, he did not have not oil money to quell problems, so his government has to engage in a hard and patient work of solving problems in the poorest country in Latin America. The result was nothing short of a miracle: economy thrived, poverty rate fell, healthcare improved, while all the democratic institutions so dear to liberals continued to function. The Morales government maintained a delicate balance between indigenous forms of communal activity and modern politics, fighting simultaneously for tradition and women rights,

To tell the entire story of the coup – and I am in no doubt it is a coup – in Bolivia, we need a new Assange who will bring out the relevant secret documents. What we can see now is that Morales, Linera and their followers were such a thorn in the flesh of the liberal establishment precisely because they succeeded: for over a decade radical Left was in power and Bolivia did not turn into Cuba or Venezuela. Democratic socialism is possible.

US is paving the way for Israel annexing the West Bank

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Monday that the US was softening its position on Israel’s network of settlements in the occupied Palestinain territory, saying it was revoking the notion that settlements are illegal under international law — a notion recognized by the rest of the world as factual and true.

“The Trump administration is reversing the Obama administration’s approach to Israeli settlements,” Pompeo said in his opening remarks at a press conference in Washington, D.C.

Pompeo said that the Trump administration would be departing from the Carter administration’s 1978 legal opinion — which served as the basis for the long-standing U.S. policy on settlements — which states that Israel’s establishment of Jewish-only settlements was “inconsistent with international law.”

Calling Israeli settlements illegal under international law, Pompeo said, “hasn’t worked” and “hasn’t advanced the cause of peace.”

“The hard truth is there will never be a judicial resolution to the conflict, and arguments about who is right and wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace,” he said.

“The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law,” Pompeo declared, adding that the administration was “expressing no view on the legal status of any individual settlement.”

According to Pompeo, one of the considerations taken by the administration leading up to the decision were the “confirmed the legality of certain settlement activities” by the Israeli legal system — a system that has been widely criticized as serving to uphold the structures of Israel’s occupation rather than one aimed at achieving justice and equality for all.

Once the annexation will be a fait accompli, Israeli law experts will cook up for the WB Palestinians some complicated 'legal' status [by the Israeli Supreme Court] that will probably be allow them to stay but without citizenship or any significant political rights. Mark my words...

Mondoweiss.

Barack Obummer: 'No more Mr Hopey Changey Guy!'

Who’s that guy telling the Democratic Party to be conservative about what they wish for from their next president? Wait, isn’t that Barack ‘Yes, we can’ Obama, the media darling that led the country before Trump ‘ruined it all?’

The cold shower poured on Friday by the former US president in front of a room full of wealthy donors in Washington was obviously directed at Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the progressive contenders in the Democratic primary race. The two senators have proposed a number of policies to radically change the way America functions economically and politically – for the benefit of the common people.

According to Obama, Democratic voters don’t really want a candidate that would “completely tear down the system and remake it.”

There are a lot of persuadable voters and there are a lot of Democrats out there who just want to see things make sense. They just don’t want to see crazy stuff. They want to see things a little more fair, they want to see things a little more just. And how we approach that I think will be important.

Yep, the guy who got elected on a message of hope that America could achieve its dreams is now telling it to be rooted in reality. The bold vision that the party nominee should offer to the divided nation should presumably involve a little less bankruptcies over medical bills, a little fewer ICE raids on immigrants and a lot less concerns from the corporate elites about their sustained profits in the foreseeable future. Yes, we can!

RT.com USA

What role did the OAS play in Bolivia's coup?

---

And this page charts in great detail the other organisations involved in the coup.

---

Max Blumenthal on the link above:

Brazil's former president Lula walks free from prison after supreme court ruling!!!

Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been released from prison where he was serving a 12-year corruption sentence, after a supreme court ruling which delighted his supporters and infuriated followers of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Lula was greeted on Friday by delirious supporters outside the federal police headquarters in the city of Curitiba where he has been imprisoned for 580 days.

Lula was incarcerated in April 2018 after a sentence for corruption and money laundering handed down by the controversial judge Sérgio Moro was upheld by an appeal court.

On Thursday Brazil’s supreme court ruled that defendants could only be imprisoned after all appeals to higher courts had been exhausted, paving the way for Lula and another 5,000 prisoners to be freed.

The decision followed revelations published by the investigative website the Intercept Brasil showing Moro had colluded with prosecutors leading the sweeping graft investigation that imprisoned Lula.

Polls had showed that Lula was leading in last year’s presidential election, but the conviction removed him from the race, giving Bolsonaro a clear run.

Bolsonaro then made Moro his justice minister, heightening the sense of injustice.

Lula presided over an extraordinary period of economic growth and reduction of inequality as president from 2003 to 2010. Even in prison he has cast a long shadow over political debate in Brazil – but his release is only likely to widen political divides here.

“His freedom does not change a divided country,” said Carlos Melo, a professor of political science at Insper, a São Paulo business school. “Let’s see if this stays on social media … The atmosphere is a little tense.”

Earlier on Friday, Bolsonaro’s vice-president, Gen Hamilton Mourão, criticised the decision on Twitter. “Where is the rule of law in Brazil?” he tweeted.

Grauniad.

Breaking! John McLaughlin on Impeachment: "Thank God For The Deep State"

Former Acting CIA Director John McLaughlin acknowledged and praised the "deep state" for any involvement that led to the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump.

"There is something unique you have to agree that now the impeachment inquiry is underway, sparked by a complaint from someone within the intelligence community, it feeds the president’s concern, an often-used term about a deep state being there to take him out?" moderator Margaret Brennan asked.

"Thank God for the deep state," McLaughlin quipped.

"Everyone here has seen this progression of diplomats and intelligence officers and White House people trooping up to Capitol Hill right now and saying these are doing their duty and responding to a higher call," McLaughlin said. "It doesn't surprise me -- with all of the people who knew what was going on here, it took an intelligence officer to step forward and say something about it, which was the trigger that then unleashed everything else."

"Now why does that happen?" he explained. "I'll tell the American people why that happens. This is the institution in the U.S. government, that with all of its flaws and it makes mistakes, it is institutionally committed to objectivity and telling the truth. It is one of the few institutions in Washington that is not in a chain of command that makes or implements policy. Its

whole job is to speak the truth, it's engraved in marble in the lobby."

[Ed.] Oh John, ROFLOL, it's the way you tell'em!

RealClearPolitics

BLOWBACK: HOW ISIS WAS CREATED BY THE U.S. INVASION OF IRAQ

“YOUR BROTHER CREATED ISIS,” college student Ivy Ziedrich told a startled Jeb Bush after a town hall meeting in Reno, Nevada, in May 2015. The then-Republican presidential hopeful tried to defend his elder sibling, former President George W. Bush, by blaming the rise of the Islamic State on Barack Obama, “because Americans pulled back” from Iraq in 2011.

It sounds a bit conspiratorial, right? Calling Dubya the creator of ISIS? The reality, however, is that Ziedrich’s accusation wasn’t far off the mark.

Had it not been for Bush’s catastrophic decision to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003, in defiance of international law, the world’s most feared terrorist group would not exist today. ISIS is blowback.

In this week’s episode of my six-part series on blowback, I examine the three ways in which Bush’s misadventure in Mesopotamia helped birth a group that the U.S. now considers to be one of the biggest threats to both U.S. national security and Middle East peace.

First, foreign military occupations tend to radicalize local populations and breed violent insurgencies. Take Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Or Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

In Iraq, the U.S. morphed from heroic liberators into brutal occupiers within a matter of weeks. In Fallujah, which would later become an ISIS stronghold, U.S. troops opened fire on a crowd of peaceful protesters in April 2003, killing and wounding dozens of Iraqis.

The shootings, the torture, the general chaos, all helped drive thousands of Iraqis from the minority Sunni community into the arms of radical groups led by brutal gangsters, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Iraq, formed in 2004 to fight U.S. troops and their local allies, was a precursor organization to … ISIS.

Second, in May 2003, in a criminally stupid and reckless move, the U.S. occupying authorities disbanded the Iraqi army. That’s right: The U.S. made more than half a million well-armed and well-trained Iraqi troops unemployed overnight. No less an authority than Gen. Colin Powell, Bush’s secretary of state and America’s former top soldier, would later describe those jobless soldiers as “prime recruits for insurgency.”

In recent years, many of the top commanders in ISIS have been identified as former senior officers in Saddam Hussein’s army. Coincidence?

Third, the U.S. military detained tens of thousands of Iraqis, many of them noncombatants, at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, where imprisoned jihadis were able to not only radicalize new recruits in plain sight, but also plan future operations and attacks. “Many of us at Camp Bucca were concerned that instead of just holding detainees, we had created a pressure cooker for extremism,” compound Cmdr. James Skylar Gerrond would later remark.

One former Bucca detainee, incidentally, was none other than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Yes, the self-proclaimed caliph and leader of ISIS who, according to Iraqi terrorism expert Hisham al-Hashimi, “absorbed the jihadist ideology and established himself among the big names” while at Bucca.

To be clear, then, ISIS is blowback from the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. And don’t just take my word for it. Listen to David Kilcullen, a former adviser to both Gen. David Petraeus and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, considered to be one of the world’s leading counter-insurgency experts. “We have to recognize that a lot of the problem is of our own making,” Kilcullen told Channel 4 News in March 2016. “There, undeniably, would be no ISIS if we hadn’t invaded Iraq.”

Mehdi Hasan @ TI