Monthly Archives: June 2020

In June 2019, two men sat in the Oval Office and talked of war. One was the bloated embodiment of American evil, a smug and fatuous egomaniac whose power and arrogance posed an existential threat to millions of the planet's inhabitants.

The other was Donald Trump.

This conversation was reported by John Bolton, the extremist martinet who briefly served as Trumps National Security Advisor. Jennifer Szalai recounts the story as it occurs in Boltons as yet unreleased book:

You can sense Boltons excitement when he describes going home at about 5:30 for a change of clothes because he expected to be at the White House all night. Its therefore an awful shock when Trump decided to call off the strikes at the very last minute, after learning they would kill as many as 150 people. Too many body bags, Trump told him. Not proportionate.

The most striking thing about this anecdote, if Bolton is to be believed, is that Trump is overriding his advisor for a more measured and humane approach. He may have done so for purely political reasons, but the contrast between the two is still striking. Equally striking is the fact that Bolton seems to think this anecdote reflects well on him and poorly on the president. The opposite is true. Anybody who lacks the requisite bloodthirstiness to meet with John Boltons approval has something going for him, whatever other sins he may have committed.

Only an irrational hatred of Donald Trump could persuade anyone to turn to John Bolton.

The Hero That Wasnt

Democrats had hoped that Boltons testimony on Trump and Ukraine would prove decisive in their impeachment inquiries. Early reports suggest that his book doesnt provide the ammunition they had hoped for. Bolton does, however, charge that Trump asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping to help him win re-election. There are only two ways to interpret that: One is that Bolton concealed an impeachable deed until it was too late to do anything about it. The other is that hes lying, as hes done so many times before.

Thats your would-be hero?

Boltons bombshells probably wont affect world history much. But failure should not be an unfamiliar experience to Bolton, a blundering war planner who is as incompetent as he is immoral. Bolton is Leslie Nielsen in Airplane! but with nuclear weapons. Hes failed at every military objective hes ever pursued. But hes succeeded in one way: Together with fellow war criminal George W. Bush, Boltons racked up a body count that exceeds one million lives. Trump cant come close to matching that.

And yet, in their eagerness to nail Trump for impeachable offenses and to do so exclusively on national security grounds Congressional Democrats were willing to turn the bloodthirsty Bolton into a star witness, a process that would have meant investing him with credibility.

Boltons comments, as recounted by Hill, were already making him something of a liberal idol. A typical comment, from Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass): When he calls Giuliani a live hand grenade, that says something. He speaks from experience. He's someone who should know.

Boltons liberal apotheosis was at hand. Instead, he chose to decline the honor.

Mendacious Menagerie

Morally dubious figures like James Clapper, Gen. Michael Hayden, and James Comey had already taken star turns as #Resistance heroes. Even George W. Bush, who lied the country into a devastating war and oversaw systematic torture, became a popular figure among liberal Democrats simply by signaling genteel disapproval of Trumps personal style.

These people deserve criticism, not praise. But liberal hatred of Donald Trump can be irrational. Its irrational to make heroes out of Trumps national security critics, most of whom seem more bloodthirsty than he is. Its irrational to invest someone like John Bolton with credibility, when Bolton lied and deceived us into war. And its irrational to support militaristic policies just because Trump opposes them (or says he does).

And yet, liberals in politics and media are still elevating these characters as long as they engage in the pleasing exercise of criticizing Trump. This MSNBC clip is a textbook example of the genre. Chuck Todd cites four former Trump advisors turned apostates: Bolton, Gen. James Mattis, Gen. John Kelly and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. How do they stack up, credibility-wise?

I think we need to look harder at who we elect, Gen. Kelly says in the clip, adding that we need to look at a candidates character and ethics. Well, the country got a glimpse of Kellys own character when he spoke glowingly of the Confederates who fought to defend slavery and claimed that the Civil War was caused by the lack of an ability to compromise. And Kellys ethics were on display when he failed to disclose his relationships with several defense contractors on ethics forms.

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Tillerson, who was CEO of Exxon Mobil, sneeringly observes that Trump doesnt like to read. Since he's such a literacy advocate, Tillerson undoubtedly read his companys internal reports on the relationship between fossil fuels and climate change reports that it concealed from the public for 40 years, while publicly casting doubt on that relationship.

Mattis record lacks the publicly-documented dishonesty of the others. But he didnt publicly reveal what he knew about the war in Afghanistan, even though (per the Washington Post):

senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.

Instead, Mattis consistently put his career above the public interest.

These are as big as it gets, Todd says of this mendacious menagerie. The biggest liars, maybe.

Unfit

Despite his record, MSNBCs Andrea Mitchell called Bolton credible. The reasons she offered for this assessment (besides the fact that he is a Yale lawyer; I kid you not) included the assertion that Bolton understands intelligence, as a consumer of intelligence.

Contrast that with the judgement of Robert Hutchings, who was Chair of the National Intelligence Council under George W. Bush. Anyone who is so cavalier not just with intelligence, but with facts, and so ideologically driven, is unfit to be national security adviser, Hutchings said of Bolton.

That quote comes from a ProPublica article headlined, John Bolton Skewed Intelligence, Say People Who Worked With Him. Another article, from the New Yorker, documents Boltons attempts to intimidate and threaten the intelligence analysts and diplomats whose conclusions undermined his call to war.

Bolton is a manipulator of intelligence, not a consumer of it.

That doesnt mean Bolton lies about everything. Many of the anecdotes in his book are likely to be true. Its highly plausible, for example, that Trump thought journalists should be executed. But Boltons hardly an unimpeachable impeachment witness.

It also needs to be said that by many accounts, including Boltons, Trump has taken a more measured approach to war and peace than Bolton or many other members of Washingtons national security establishment. Only someone with an irrational hatred of Donald Trump or a desire to bolster the bipartisan military consensus could turn to the likes of John Bolton.

All You Need is Hate

Thats not to say there arent rational reasons to hate Trump. Hes clearly corrupt in a variety of ways, both personal and professional. That makes it even harder to understand why the Democrats chose to base their impeachment efforts solely on Russia and Ukraine. What happened, for example, to Trumps support for Saudi Arabia and the potential conflicts of interest there (which we reported on for The Intercept)? What about the emoluments clause and the many signs of corrupt profiteering? Or the potential campaign law violations around the Stormy Daniels payoff?

After the books publication, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) called Bolton the darling of the liberal left. Thats not true. But it could have been, if Bolton had been willing to testify. Instead, Dems anger at his refusal is based on an escapist fantasy. Had they been able to call him to the Hill, it probably wouldnt have accomplished much. Its likely that Bolton would have tried to pull off the same trick he attempts in the book: being vague enough about his Ukraine accusations to skirt impeachability, while attempting to preserve his right-wing credibility.

Meanwhile, Democrats would have been burnishing the reputation of a bona fide war criminal one whos written books with titles like Surrender is Not an Option and How Barack Obama is Endangering Our National Sovereignty. Bolton would undoubtedly have used his new liberal credibility to do what hes always done: push for needless wars around the globe while giving aid and comfort to right-wing dictators like Bolsonaro and Duterte.

For his part, all Trump would have had to do to cast doubt on Boltons credibility was tell the truth about Boltons Iraq record. That would also have given Trump another chance to position himself to the Democrats left on military policy. It worked for him in 2016, and it could work for him again.

The liberals who looked to Bolton for rescue, the ones who have elevated figures like Kelly and Tillerson, have overlooked a fundamental principle: The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. To believe otherwise is well, irrational.

Read this article:

John Bolton and Liberals Irrational Hatred of Trump - Common Dreams

The University of Iowas largest college will lay off 15 instructional-track faculty as it enters the first phase of a three-tiered plan to make up to $25 million in budget cuts due to revenue loss caused by the novel-coronavirus pandemic.

The first tier identifies $15 million in cuts within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The cuts follow the UIs $70 million financial loss due to COVID-19 and an $8 million cut in state appropriations to state Board of Regents institutions by the Iowa Legislature, and an expected drop in enrollment at the UI in the fall of 2020.

President Bruce Harreld announced in a budget message to the campus community on June 8 that the university was considering permanent or temporary layoffs, hiring and salary freezes, or salary reductions as a result of COVID-19-related financial losses.

While federal funding will help, it is far short of what is needed to make the university whole, Harreld said in the message. As a result, many collegiate and central service unit leaders across the university will be forced to make difficult decisions, some of which will impact employees.

RELATED:UI may permanently lay off some employees as a result of COVID-19

In an email sent to CLAS faculty and staff on Wednesday, Dean Steve Goddard said the college expects a 13-percent enrollment decrease in non-resident students and a 5-percent decline in residential students.

In an email to The Daily Iowan, Goddard said the prediction is slightly more optimistic than the universitys predictions for fall enrollment. However, exact numbers will not be available until after the fall semester begins.

The liberal-arts college will lose 15 of its 205 lecturers. In an email to the DI, Goddard said the layoffs account for $778,000 or 5.2 percent of the $15 million dollar cuts, which will go into effect beginning July 1.

Some instructional-track faculty have already seen their contracts terminated ahead of the official July 1 date. Others have seen the typical length of their contracts reduced, and now remain uncertain of their fate once the second tier rolls around in the 2020-2021 school year, where additional cuts will depend on state appropriation decisions.

The state appropriation cuts will be long lasting, and we may never recover the funding once the deappropriation is made, Goddard said in the email.

Steve Duck, departmental executive officer within the Department of Rhetoric, said five instructional-track faculty members in the department were up for contract renewal, by recommendation of the college. Of those five, three contracts were not renewed.

Duck said the standard contract length at the time of renewal is three years. However, the remaining two faculty members up for contract renewal only had their contracts extended for one year making them vulnerable to the second round of cuts. He said the cuts did not appear to be based on the value and merit of the instructor.

Its very difficult to see colleagues who have performed so well arbitrarily cut just because their contracts are up for their renewal, Duck said.

Duck said that officials within the Department of Rhetoric agreed that they would have taken a pay cut to their own salaries in an effort to protect their colleagues from elimination, had they been given the chance. One lecturer, Ashley Wells, even offered to resign in favor of keeping any one of the faculty members from being let go, but Duck said both efforts did not change the UIs decision.

Shes resigned, shes going to another state, and I asked the college if that would save any of the three people who have been terminated, and they basically said no it wouldnt, Duck said.

Elke Heckner, a lecturer in the German department who was among the 15 lecturers who were laid off, said the termination process was the most cruel and inhumane process she had ever experienced.

After seven years of dedication to the core values of the university, to helping revitalize my department with exciting and urgently needed courses, I am told that my position will not be renewed with two weeks notice, Heckner said.

Heckner taught The Politics of Memory: Holocaust, Genocide, and 9/11, one of the courses the UI offers that satisfies the Diversity and Inclusion general education requirement for students. The course, which was fully enrolled with 22 students, will no longer be offered due to her termination, she said.

We are right now in a huge national crisis issues of racial justice and diversity, Heckner said. Why would we, in this moment when students need ongoing conversations on these very difficult and challenging times, why, at this time of crisis, would we want to cut lines off faculty like me who have conducted these difficult conversations for years and are especially equipped to do this?

The lecturer said she was frustrated by the lack of transparency provided by the university regarding the criteria they followed when making the decision about which facultys contracts to terminate, as well as the decision to delay temporary, mandatory cuts to administrative supplements for leadership, department heads, and directors until the third tier of the budget cut process.

Goddard told theDI temporary salary reductions immediately made to administrative faculty salaries would not be enough.

Temporary salary reductions help with short-term budget reductions to fill a gap in a given fiscal year, but they do not address the long-term budget cuts we are facing, Goddard said in an email to the DI.

While the UI Faculty Senate was not directly consulted about the recent lack of contract renewals, senate President Joseph Yockey said the organization continues to stress to the university that salary reductions, furloughs, layoffs, or hits to academic programming should not be imposed, unless other cost-saving measures are first found, beyond doubt, to be inadequate.

The Faculty Council will hold a special meeting June 25 to discuss steps for addressing budget issues for the summer and into the fall.

I think everyone understands sacrifices will need to be made. No one will escape the budget crisis unscathed, Yockey said in an email to the DI. But at the same time, it is important to recognize that cuts to faculty or academic programs are rarely about trimming fat; those cuts go straight to the universitys muscle and bone.

The independent, student-run newsroom at the DI covers the University of Iowa and local community to keep you informed. Your support helps provide the necessary resources and training to continue our mission.

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15 faculty members laid off within College of Liberal Arts and Sciences amid budget cuts - UI The Daily Iowan

At the turn of the 21st century, when the hegemony of neo-liberal orthodoxy reigned supreme, Latin America was the place where its confident and seemingly invincible march was interrupted. Forcefully defying prophecies of the end of history and the end of ideology, new left governments were elected in Latin America that challenged the neo-liberal consensus of the era. This process not only rekindled hopes for a revival of the left, but also cleared the grounds to build new left alternatives that can learn from the shortcomings of its 20th century counterparts. However, the last five years have witnessed a weakening of the left in the region. Brazil, Chile and Ecuador turned to the right and Venezuela is reeling under a severe economic crisis. Even then, Bolivia still stood out as a beacon of hope for the Latin American left. Though it did not enjoy the same degree of popular support as it did earlier, the government of Evo Morales still remained the most powerful political force in the country, and Bolivia had the highest rate of economic growth in the region continuously for five years, ensured economic and political stability. For all these reasons, there was a lot at stake in the Bolivian presidential elections of 2019 for the Latin American (and global) left, the national oligarchic elites and United States (US) imperialist interests.

However, what eventually happened turned out to be worse than the worst nightmares. Through an analysis of the usurpation of power by the extreme right-wing forces in Bolivia, this article examines the characteristics of the contemporary phase of global neo-liberalism.

New Ways of Staging a Coup

After the electoral tribunal declared Morales as the winner in the 2019 elections, opposition candidate Carlos Mesa refused to accept the results, alleging fraud. Protests broke out in various Bolivian cities. The Bolivian government invited the Organization of American States (OAS) to conduct an audit of the elections. On 8 November, the OAS team recommended that new elections be held as they found irregularities in the vote count. There is still no consensus on the question of whether there were irregularities in the elections held on 20 October. Later, studies by the Center for Economic and Policy Research based in Washington, Centro Estratgico Latinoamericano de Geopoltica (CELAG) and a group of MIT researchers questioned the conclusions of the OAS.

Nevertheless, once the OAS team released its preliminary report, Morales immediately accepted its recommendation and asked the legislative assembly to form a new electoral tribunal and declare fresh elections. However, the opposition demanded the immediate resignation of Morales. With the chiefs of police and the armed forces also asking him to step down, Morales realised that he had no other option. He announced his resignation declaring that a coup has been consummated in Bolivia.

By then, Luis Fernando Camacho, a multimillionaire business tycoon and representative of extreme right-wing politics, had eclipsed Carlos Mesa as the major spokesperson of the opposition to Morales. Hours after the resignation of Morales, Camacho barged into the presidential palace with his ally Marco Pumari. Masked men removed the wiphala, the flag of indigenous self-determination from the top of the presidential palace and burnt it, with a mob cheering Yes, we could! Yes, we could! The wiphala was officially incorporated as a symbol of the fatherland along with the national tricolour flag by the new constitution promulgated by the constituent assembly convoked by Morales during his first term in office.

In the power vacuum that was created, senators from the opposition met in a session without the necessary quorum, and Jeanine ez, the second vice president of the senate proclaimed herself as the interim president. Senators from the Movimiento al Socialismo, the party of Morales, did not attend the session as most of them were underground due to the severe political persecution party members were subjected to after the resignation of Morales. Some of their houses had been burnt and their family members kidnapped and tortured.

The self-proclaimed President made repeated statements that her government was transitional and that its only objective was to conduct elections. Though ez and her party, which only won around 4% of the votes in the country in the 2019 elections, have no mandate to make radical changes in policies, they seem to be in a great hurry to reverse all the important initiatives of the Morales presidency. The following sections of this article discuss how a government with minuscule popular support, with the backing of the armed forces and US imperialism, went on to aggressively pursue neo-liberal policies in an unabashedly dictatorial fashion. It, once again, reveals the tendency of global right-wing forces and US imperialism of making a mockery of democracy whenever it does not suit their interests. The Bolivian experience thus reinforces the need to retheorise the relationship between neo-liberal capitalism and democracy, a task that holds immense relevance in the context of the upsurge of right-wing authoritarianism in various parts of the world.

Neo-liberal Restoration

Like the other new left governments that emerged in Latin America as part of the pink tide, the Morales administration adopted policies that went against the neo-liberal consensus that marked the economic policies of the last decades of the 20th century in the region. The election of Morales in 2005 was the product of a series of mass mobilisations against neo-liberal economic policies.

In 2006, Morales announced the nationalisation of gas. However, it was a partial nationalisation that only involved an increase in the royalties the transnational gas companies pay the state. Nevertheless, it enabled the government gain up to 70% of the revenue generated from hydrocarbons (Farthing and Kohl 2014). Subsequently, similar kinds of nationalisations were implemented in electricity, telecommunications, and mines, enabling a major increase in public investment. Public investment increased by about 250% from an average of $581 million in 19992005 to $2,046 million between 2006 and 2012.

The increased role of the government in the economy helped the redistribution of wealth, both in terms of race and class. Between 2007 and 2015, moderate and extreme poverty decreased by approximately 21% and the Gini coefficient went from 0.56 to 0.47, reflecting a decrease in income inequality (Beverinotti 2018). In 2005, the top 10% of the population had 128 times more income than the bottom 10% by 2012; this difference decreased to 46 times (Pozas 2017).

Direct cash transfers were made to the elderly, public school students and pregnant women. The government also increased the education budget significantly. School attendance increased. A massive literacy programme was implemented and 5,00,000 people graduated from literacy classes. Material benefits for the indigenous population were significant. The econometric study of Hicks et al (2018) points out that the indigenous population of Bolivia achieved a rapid catch-up in income and expenditure relative to the non-indigenous population, which enabled the former to approximately close one-quarter of the interracial gap in income in the pre-Morales era.

Morales also promised to carry out an agrarian revolution in the country. Farthing and Kohl (2014) point out that land surveying, titling, and distribution were done at three times the rate of previous administrations. Ten million acres were expropriated for redistribution from expiring logging concessions and big landowners who held lands over the limit of 25,000 acres set by the new agrarian law. By 2012, for the first time since the Spanish conquest, smallholders, who are predominantly indigenous, control 55% of the land.

The transformations initiated by the Morales government are more reformist than revolutionary when judged by the standards of the 20th-century left. For instance, the redistribution of land to peasants did not translate into equality in the ownership of lands of the best quality. The lands best suited for cultivation continue to be concentrated in the hands of the traditional landed oligarchy, and one-third of the land remains in the hands of large agro-industrial firms. This has led to disagreements on whether the policies of the Morales government represented post-neo-liberalism or reconstituted neo-liberalism (Fuentes 2010; Webber 2010). However, the fact that the policies of Morales marked a break with neo-liberal orthodoxy cannot be denied.

One of the priorities of the ez government has been the restoration of the older neo-liberal policies. The new government has no qualms in declaring that they intended to privatise public sector companies. Knowing that public opinion is against this position, the government tries to create an impression that the public sector companies are unviable and that they are running on huge deficits, which could then justify their privatisation. Some public sector companies were forced to turn bankrupt by the newlyappointed executives by making unjustifiable exorbitant expenses.

For instance, the new chief executive officer (CEO) of the public sector airline Boliviana de Aviacin (BOA) appointed by the ez government declared that the airline was running on severe deficit, with no audit to back up that claim. The workers union called a press conference to inform that flights were arbitrarily reduced by 30% in the peak season. It is no coincidence that the new BOA manager was the chief financial officer of Amazonas, a private airline that is its main rival (Los Tiempos 2020; Eju TV 2019). Not content with bankrupting state companies, the new government reduced public investment by 32.5% (Bedregal 2020).

The issue of lithium occupied a central place in the coup. Bolivia is believed to possess approximately 70% of the worlds lithium, the raw material for batteries in electronic equipment and electric cars. It is seen as one of the most valuable raw materials of the future. Morales planned to begin exploration and industrialisation of lithium through a collaboration between the public and private sectors in which the state-owned YLC would have 51% of the shares, a decision that is not favourable for multinational corporations. The plan to industrialise natural resources and add value to them was a significant shift made by the Morales government in Bolivias economic policies. The ez government, however, gave a clear indication that she would move away from these policies by appointing Juan Carlos Zuleta, a staunch opponent of industrialisation, as the CEO of the public sector company created for the extraction of lithium.

Changes in economic policies were also matched by changes in foreign policy. Besides breaking diplomatic relations with Cuba, the government declared that Bolivia will withdraw from the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), the alliance of countries governed by leftist governments in the region against the neo-liberal model. After a decade, Bolivia sent an ambassador to the US and the government declared support for brazenly imperialist policies such as the USs war threat to Venezuela.

Political Repression

The usurpation of power by the extreme right-wing forces led to the eruption of massive protests. The ez government let loose severe repression on the indigenous population that has been at the forefront of these mobilisations. According to official figures published by the National Ombudsman, 32 people have died and 770 have been injured in the repression of protests against the coup. The report of the Argentine delegation of human rights that visited the country reveals the violation of the rights of children, adolescents, senior citizens and people with disabilities (Crnica 2019). Sandra Carreo, part of the Argentine human rights delegation, declared in a television interview that there are about 1,000 forced disappearances in the country, and that the relatives of the victims are being threatened to not report them (Archivo de los medios 2019).

In the neighbourhood of Senkata in the city of El Alto, protestors, who blockaded a gas refinery to cut off fuel supply to the administrative capital La Paz, were brutally massacred by the armed forces on 19 November. The next day, residents of the city accompanied by thousands of protestors who arrived from other parts of the country marched to the centre of La Paz with the coffins. They were tear-gassed, forcing them to flee and leave the coffins abandoned on the streets for a while.

Press freedom has been severely restricted. Two days after coming to power, the minister of communication threatened journalists that they would be tried for sedition for reporting news unfavourable to the government. This immediately silenced the Bolivian mainstream media. Argentine journalists covering the protests were forced to leave the country and an Al Jazeera correspondent was tear-gassed when she was reporting on live television. International television channels Telesur and Russia Today, which began covering anti-government protests, were taken off the air.

The government also forcibly closed 53 community radio stations that were alternative sources of information, especially in the countryside. In many cases, the police and the military destroyed and burned some of them. Extreme right-wing mobs also occupied the office of the Unified Syndical Confederation of Rural Workers of Bolivia (CSUTCB), the biggest peasant confederation in the country, and its community radio station with firecrackers, dynamites and Molotov after tying the director of the radio to a tree (Chungara 2020).

Racist Backlash

Though the majority of Bolivians are of indigenous descent, the country had to wait for nearly two centuries since its foundation to have an indigenous president. As explained above, the redistributive policies of the government of Morales benefited many indigenous sectors. The government also appointed more people of indigenous origin, especially women wearing the pollera, skirt (which has historically been seen as an index of indigenous backwardness) as ministers, ambassadors and directors of institutions. Radical indigenous intellectuals dismissed these moves as mere tokenism as the number of indigenous people in positions of power was still highly disproportional to their share in the population. However, the presence of indigenous people, especially women wearing the pollera, in such positions had a tremendous symbolic impact on large sections of the indigenous population as it increased their self-esteem and optimism.

This process led to an intense racist backlash from the white-mestizo elites. The mobilisations for the ouster of Morales in 2019 witnessed the explosion of racial hatred that was brewing over the years. Extreme right-wing paramilitary organisations went around the streets, rounding up and physically attacking indigenous people. Racialisation of indigenous people also plays a major role in the ez governments repressive machinery as protestors complain of abuses by the police and the armed forces just for being brown-skinned (Annur TV 2019).

The political genealogy of the extreme right-wing forces in Bolivia is alarming. Camacho, the major organiser of the coup, began his political career as the leader of the paramilitary group Unin Juvenil Cruceista (UJC), which was founded by Carlos Valverde who acted as a paramilitary in the military dictatorship of Hugo Banzer in the 1970s. He had a close relationship with Klaus Barbie, the Nazi general who is infamously called the butcher of Lyon for organising massacres and torture of several Jews and other activists of the French resistance to Nazi occupation. Barbie fled Germany after World War II and lived in Bolivia under a different name. Camacho, the major organiser of the coup against Morales, had led the UJC in Moraless first administration, when the paramilitaries of that organisation interrupted the marches of the indigenous organisations with whips and chains, went to indigenous neighbourhoods with sticks and bats to terrorise people, and surrounded the city in jeeps painted with the swastika (Fabricant 2008).

ez, the self-proclaimed President, is not far from Camacho in terms of her ideological leanings as she proudly claims to have Aryan and Nordic features (de Marval and Scelza 2019). Four of the ministers in her first cabinet were members of the UJC. The political discourse of ez is also marked by unconcealed racism. For instance, in one of her speeches, she said that the right-wing parties need to form a united front to prevent the savages from returning to power. Savage is a heavily loaded term in Bolivia as it has been historically deployed in reference to the supposed backwardness of indigenous people. Civilising the savage indigenous people to assimilate them into the dominant culture was an essential part of the Bolivian nation-building project in the 20th century. With such statements, the new right-wing government makes no pretensions of its racist agenda.

Religion and Politics

Religion is a new tool that neo-liberalism uses to re-establish its hegemony in Latin America. It was first used by extreme right-wing politician Jair Bolsonaro to win the Brazilian presidential elections in 2018 (Cruz 2019). Bolivian right-wing forces resorted to the same strategy during the coup.

The new constitution promulgated by the Morales government declared the state as secular for the first time in the countrys history. Besides removing Catholicism from the status of the states official religion, the government began to actively promote indigenous ritual practices. The declaration of the state as secular was a move that officially placed indigenous beliefs and Catholicism on an equal footing. Indigenous ritual specialists were present at many official government events.

During the coup, the reaction of the more conservative sectors of the Church to these policies was evident. After Moraless resignation, Camacho entered the presidential palace with the Bible and the priest who accompanied him declared that

the Bible has entered the palace again and the Pachamama (the indigenous deity representing Mother Earth) will never return. Jeanine Aez also entered the Presidential palace with an oversized Bible in hand declaring this Bible is very significant for us, our strength is God, power is God.

In Conclusion

The re-establishment of neo-liberalism has been the priority of the oligarchic elites and their imperialist allies since the turn to the left in the region in the 21st century. The route to the right was different in each country. However, common patterns can be identified, such as the instrumental use of religion in politics, racism and the rush to aggressively implement neo-liberal policies immediately after taking power.

Neo-liberalism as a politicaleconomic doctrine established its hegemony in Europe and the US in the last decades of the 20th century by articulating with religious conservatism and anti-immigrant racism, as evidenced by studies of Reaganism and Thatcherism (Smith 1994; Harvey 2005). Contemporary neo-liberalism does not seem to be very different as illiberal discourses, such as racism and religious fundamentalism, continue to be its dearest bedfellows in Latin America, the US, Europe and India. The Bolivian experience reveals how the desperate quest to re-establish neo-liberal dominance leads national oligarchic elites and their imperialist allies to even abandon a formal commitment to liberal democracy and the rule of law. However, this should not be surprising, given that the first laboratory of neo-liberalism was Chile, where the military dictator Augusto Pinochet invited the Chicago boys to his country after overthrowing the democratically elected left-wing government of Salvador Allende in a coup. All of this makes one wonder: Is there anything liberal about neo-liberalism?

References

Annur TV (2019): Bolivia: Las mujeres de El Alto llegaron hasta La Paz, https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v= 2442706082618714.

Archivo de los medios (2019): Bolivia: Denuncian que hay 1.000 personas desaparecidas por el gobierno de facto, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7Qn0dllaDU&fbclid=IwAR0eavHMEKi6CcipRR2....

Beverinotti, Javier (2018): Development Challenges in Bolivia, Inter-American Development Bank, https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/Development-....

Chungara, Danica (2020): La democracia de Aez silencia radios comunitarios y otros medios, La izquierda diaria, 4 January, https://www.laizquierdadiario.com.bo/La-democracia-de-Anez-silencia-radi....

Crnica (2019): Informe argentino en Bolivia denuncia torturas a nios y ancianos, 30 November https://www.cronica.com.ar/info-general/Informe-argentino-en-Bolivia-den...?fbclid=IwAR3QK1N7xxxNF8_TW9-a10Tw-SXkwi3Ggmq9YMduz-CGta2Uq8NcN6dSHA8.

Cruz, Juan (2019): Por qu gan Bolsonaro en Brasil? Revista mexicana de sociologa, Vol 81, No 3, pp 66575.

de Marval, Valentina and Bruno Scelza (2019): Estos son los agresivos tuits contra originarios e indgenas que borr la presidenta interina de Bolivia, Jeanine ez, AFP Factual, 21 November, https://factual.afp.com/estos-son-los-agresivos-tuits-contra-originarios...

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Neo-liberal Restoration at the Barrel of a Gun : Dissecting the Racist Coup in Bolivia - Economic and Political Weekly

Amidst the escalated tensions between India and China, following the violent clash between the two sides on June 15 at Galwan Valley in Ladakh, social media warriors from the liberal camp took to Twitter to cast aspersions about the tragic incident. In a bid to criticise Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the liberals mocked the martyrdom of 20 soldiers and suggested that it was a ploy to garner votes in the upcoming Bihar elections.

A Twitter user (@BrandySahni) wrote, Strange how there are always martyred soldiers ready for use before every election. And this time Taujee (PM Modi) hit the bullseye Slain soldiers from the Bihar Regiment before elections in Bihar. It could not have been more opportune if he has planned it!!!

Uzair Hasan Rizvi who claims to be a fact checker for AFP on his Twitter bio said that the Bihar regiment of the Indian army have soldiers from different states and concluded that the mention of Bihar in the condolence message of PM Modi was to get leverage in the upcoming Bihar elections.

Another Twitter user (@jameel7866786) suggested a bigger internal conspiracy surrounding the martyrdom of Pulwama soldiers in 2019 and the recent border clash between the Indian and Chinese forces. Linking the tragic Pulwama attack with the General Elections of 2019 and the martyrdom of 20 soldiers from the Bihar regiment to Bihar elections, he asked others to connect the dots between the two mutually exclusive events.

A Twitter user named Professor questioned the coincidence of the timing of the Bihar elections and the decision to deploy the Bihar regiment at the Line of Actual Control.

Replying to an absurd and baseless tweet that PM Modi gave away the Galwan Valley to China, a Congress supporter (@SamanSutiya1) wrote that the martyrdom of 20 Indian soldiers was connected to victory in Bihar elections. 20 mein se 13 Bihar ke thay. Ab benefit le sakta hain, he claimed. The loose translation goes as, 13 out of 20 soldiers were from Bihar. They (BJP) can now be benefitted.

Sasidharan Pazhoor wrote, Bihar elections ahead. Bihar regiment suffers casualties. No, I am not suggesting anything. Interestingly, this is a textbook liberal strategy to sow the seeds of doubt in peoples mind without being explicit about it.

Replying to controversial journalist Rajdeep Sardesai, a user named Desh who claimed to have lost his brother reiterated the conspiracy theory of deploying Bihar regiment at the border for benefitting in Bihar elections.

This is not the first time that the liberal jamaat has ganged up to disprove facts and peddle conspiracy theories. Following the Pulwama attack, manyCongress supportershad floated conspiracy theories that Pulwama was an inside job carried out on the behest of Prime Minister Modi. One Congress leader and conman who questioned Pulwama as an inside job wasgiven a Lok Sabha ticketby the party. AGoa Congress leaderhad even asked for proof of the terror attack and accused PM Modi of planning the Pulwama attack. AKarnataka Congress MPeven said that the Pulwama attack was a match-fixing between PM Modi and Pakistan. Congress party had evenraised questionsasking how did explosives reach the spot indirectly accusing the Modi government of carrying out an inside job. It is not just limited to the Congress party. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee hadstatedthat PM Modi knew about the Pulwama attack earlier and did not do anything to stop it.

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Ladakh standoff: Liberals come together to cast aspersions that Bihar regiment soldiers were martyred because of upcoming state elections - OpIndia

As Yves Giroux, the parliamentary budget officer, put it in his guidance for MPs: It will be difficult for parliamentarians to perform their critical role of properly scrutinizing proposed government spending in the four-hour window. And so it proved. It was a thoroughly unsatisfying experience for anyone who cared to watch.

So much money is flowing through these supplementary estimates that ministers had trouble answering what it was all for

Former NDP MP Pat Martin chaired the government operations committee for years and fought successive governments to improve scrutiny of spending. Its the most fundamental principle of our democracy and the most important job a member of Parliament has, he said. It used to make me crazy that billions of dollars would fly out the door with only a cursory review of an hour or two of review or oversight. That is the bare minimum of accountability the government owes the people.

The opposition parties commanded a majority in the House on Wednesday and could, in theory, have demanded more information. But the NDP had already shown its hand and bargained away its independence.

Singh and his colleagues might have a better chance of changing the world if they just joined the Liberal party.

Email: jivison@postmedia.com | Twitter: IvisonJ

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John Ivison: Who cares about $87 billion? Not the Liberals or the NDP apparently - National Post