Bolivia rebellion?

New poll!! To hell with California!
There has been a lot of unrest in Bolivia directed towards their president, because he has taken pro-US policies in trade and drug control, as well as attempted to build a natural gas pipeline. So now the capital is under siege as protesters (a great part of whom are indigenous farmers and coca growers) swarm around. About 50 have been killed in violence. It's interesting how South American politics works: where it's so poor, the coca growers have a real slice of the economic activity (as they have for centuries) and they just don't accept U.S. dominance over their culture. On the other hand, maybe they are just immoral narcotraficantes. Latest Reuters:

LA PAZ, Bolivia, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Bolivia's army fought to stop columns of protesters from streaming into the food-starved capital on Wednesday as a popular uprising against the president spread.

Catholic Church officials reported that two miners were killed and six other protesters injured 50 miles (110 km) outside of La Paz. Protests also raged in the eastern city of Cochabamba, where marchers threw rocks at police and Molotov cocktails at a government palace.

Analysts predict President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, whose coalition is crumbling, will have to make concessions to protesters to prevent more violence from toppling his administration. The monthlong revolt against his U.S.-backed policies have left at least 53 people dead.

The government in South America's poorest nation, where six out of 10 people live on less than $2 a day, is under attack for a host of grievances ranging from its U.S.-led eradication of coca to a plan to export natural gas to the United States.

A more radical interpretation via ZNet says that

Once again, this time ironically, Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada has summed up the situation succinctly: a tiny minority is trying to divide the country. Sánchez de Lozada?whose approval rating stands at 8%--and his inner circle have dug in their heels, raised their voices in contempt, and adopted bellicose postures. The US Embassy, the media, and the upper layers of the military and police are the only remaining supports of the regime. The opposition sectors insist on the resignation of Sánchez de Lozada and his draconian ministers, Carlos Sánchez Berzaín and Yerko Kukoc, as well as a change in the law regulating petroleum multinationals.

It remains to be seen whether the opposition movements, led by the highland Aymara, will succeed in overthrowing Sánchez de Lozada, implementing a Constituent Assembly, and forging a new Bolivia, or whether rightwing authoritarianism a la Uribe will be imposed with the aid of the US Embassy. The situation is unfolding with such rapidity that predictions are of marginal utility, but one thing is certain: the Aymara working class and peasantry of the western highlands; the coca growers of the eastern lowlands; the Quechua-speaking Indian peasantry of the southern highlands and valleys; the working class of La Paz and Cochabamba; in other words, the people who produce Bolivia?s wealth are demanding an end to 511 years of looting, exploitation, and political domination. They insist on becoming the beneficiaries of their labor, on taking the political decisions that affect their lives and exercising sovereignty over natural resources.

Here is another ZNet article.

Army officer sends 500 fake letters to newspapers; bad stuff in Karbala

An army Colonel drew up a form letter trumpeting his unit's accomplishments around Kirkuk, and had soldiers in his unit sign it and send it back to their hometown papers. Unfortunately people caught on quickly and now it's a bit of a PR flap.

Amid the daily headlines of bloodshed and unrest in Iraq, Caraccilo wanted to draw attention to the work of his troops by mailing a form letter to soldiers' hometowns.

"The quality of life and security for the citizens has been largely restored, and we are a large part of why that has happened," reads the five-paragraph, typed letter sent in late summer.

MacDonald said no one was forced to sign the letter, though most did. At least one soldier contacted by Gannett News Service said he never signed the letter that appeared in his hometown newspaper in Charleston, W.Va. Several parents also said they knew their sons had not written the letters that appeared in local newspapers.

News of the letter-writing campaign emerged over the weekend as President Bush and other administration officials were conducting their own campaign to emphasize successes in Iraq.

Also the Boston Globe has a report. The always-interesting Justin Raimondo is on the case as well, pointing out that oil production up there is going horribly, with frequent, unreported pipeline bombings. There's talk that the Turks are going to enter the country, against the wishes of virtually every Iraqi.

There is some nasty stuff brewing at the major Shia shrines in Karbala. It seems that followers of hard-liner Moqtada al-Sadr have been trying to seize control of the shrines from the more moderate Shia who follow Ali Sistani of the group SCIRI. Sadr also stated that he wanted to form a "shadow government" but that has been withdrawn for now. Sadr has been accused of fomenting violence in Iraq. The sharp Middle Eastern professor Juan Cole has some analysis on what's going on between the Shia militias.

He also wrote a really lengthy look at the different Shia groups, such as al Dawa, SCIRI and the Sadr family for the Boston Review. If you ever wanted to know how SCIRI and the INC fit together you should look at it. His conclusion was apt:

Whether Iraq?s Sunnis will turn to radicalism and reinforce al Qaeda is as yet unknown. But what does seem clear is that the Iraq war has proved a detour in the War on Terror, drawing away key resources from the real threat of al Qaeda and continued instability in Afghanistan. The old pillars have proven more resilient than the hawks imagined. What really needs to be changed are U.S. support for political authoritarianism and Islamic conservatism, and acquiescence in Israeli land grabs on the West Bank. Those two, together, account for most of the trouble the United States has in the Muslim world. The Iraq war did nothing to change that.

A small update on the Feith-Zell-Chalabi international law firm story.