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Evo Morales takes the coca leaf to the UN and defends it After unexpectedly wielding a green coca leaf in his right hand, Bolivian President Evo Morales demonstrated Tuesday before world leaders one of the many injustices which he came to raise before the United Nations. Before the initial surprise and reserved applause immediately afterwards, Morales said that to criminalize the coca leaf was an "historic injustice." "This leaf represents the Andean culture, the environment and the hope of the people," said Morales, who before being President was the leader of the Bolivian coca growers. "It is not possible...

As Bolivian President Evo Morales tries to implement a controversial "agrarian revolution", the BBC's Damian Kahya visits the east of the country to talk to both settlers and landowners. Settler building a house (Photo: Amy de Wit) The settlers say they will not give up and are still building houses Land is a cause of conflict now in Bolivia. A recent survey by the Catholic Church here found that just 50,000 families own almost 90% of Bolivia's productive land. Evo Morales, the country's first indigenous president, was elected earlier this year on a platform promising to redistribute land. Few...

Bolivia is on fire. The fiery democratic revolutionary babes of Santa Cruz are no more. Now, it’s angry citizens of The Media Luna - four provinces, led by Santa Cruz, fighting to the last man against the brutal expansionary communism of Evo Morales’ Bolivia. This is going well beyond peaceful demonstrations to the first stages of insurgency and maybe war. Revolutionary war. They are fighting tyranny. They’re fighting with axes, fists, and cudgels, in an action that began with a general strike Friday in four provinces against Morales’ effort to rewrite the constitution to maximize his own power. Attendence was...

Excerpt - LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP)--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 Bolivia's 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 street protests. He organized December elections won by the radical leftist Evo Morales, a remarkably strife-free process for such a polarized nation. Twenty-eight Chinese-made shoulder-fired...

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia — The sun sets golden on the small town of Anzaldo, deep in the Bolivian countryside. On a recent evening, Lolita Antezana took a 90-minute taxi ride from Cochabamba to Anzaldo, her freshly purchased table and 10 chairs lashed atop the roof. With its dusty streets, quiet tenor and predictable routines, the town has always been her home. At 79, Antezana said she's "too old to get involved in politics." But even she finds herself excited about Bolivia's new president, Evo Morales. She saw him on television, playing soccer with some kids in La Paz, a decidedly unpresidential...

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) - President Evo Morales said yesterday that members of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy are behaving as if they were in "the times of the Inquisition" as he defended his government's plan to remove Catholicism as the sole religion taught in schools. His comments came a day after Education Minister Felix Patzi referred to Catholic "monsignors" as "liars" and said they have been serving the oligarchy for the 514 years since Spain colonised the country. "I want to ask the (church) hierarchies that they understand freedom of religion and beliefs in our country," Morales told reporters....

LA PAZ, Bolivia - Bolivia's education minister called for an end to religious education in the country's schools, drawing criticism from the Roman Catholic Church which could see its schools affected by the proposed change. Education Minister Feliz Patzi said at an assembly on education reform that the government aims to make education secular in Bolivia, where Catholicism has been the official religion since the country's founding in 1825. "Secular means that there is no monopoly on religious teaching," Patzi said. "Secular means that there is no indoctrination." Reforms drafted by the education assembly in Sucre, about 335 miles south...

CURAHUARA DE CARANGAS, Bolivia (AP) - ... Being Aymara Indians like Evo Morales, South America's first truly indigenous leader, they might be expected to line up squarely behind him. Yet they, like many Bolivians, have their doubts, fearing they are being led into a dangerous alliance with Cuba and Venezuela. They worry about Morales' effort to make his ``people's revolution'' permanent, beginning with elections Sunday for a national assembly to rewrite Bolivia's constitution. Jaime Perez, a powerful Aymara leader, takes issue with Morales' alignment with ``the socialist politics of Cuba'' and with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who strengthened his own...

LA PAZ, Bolivia - Students attending a conflict resolution course in this politically tumultuous Andean nation got some unexpected extracurricular experience when Bolivia's leftist government accused the program's sponsor of being a front for U.S. spies.

La Paz.- The entry into Bolivia of a dozen military flights from Venezuela and the presumed presence of soldiers from that country unleashed a virtual "media war'' between the government and the main opposition group. In a paid announcement, the Ministry of Defense characterized as "irresponsible'' and "absurd'' the public accusation by Democratic Social Power (Podemos), the main opposition group, that the previous evening had published another paid announcement entitled: "Chavez’ troops over-run Bolivia''. In its ad, Podemos accused that "a large number of military flights from Venezuela are landing at night and early morning '' at the main airports...

Americans are suffering a new psychological disorder: news-induced political numbness. It's not the return of Jimmy Carter's "malaise." Despite the steady stream of Congressional absurdities and conservatives' growing impatience with the president, we're doing pretty well for a nation at war. But the incessant 24/7 television-newspaper-Internet barrage has caused people to tune the world out instead of reserving energy to think about the events that must be the focus of our attention. All of us, especially the White House, desperately want a break to rest and recuperate. But that's not an option. Times are tough, and we just have to...

Morales and Chávez rebuked at EU summit Friday May 12, 2006The Guardian (UK) EU leaders today rounded on Bolivia and Venezuela for challenging free market policies at a summit of European and Latin American leaders in Vienna. Wolfgang Schuessel, the Austrian chancellor and the event's host, told the two countries open markets were key to promoting economic growth and prosperity. "There are always two possibilities in life. Either you want to open your markets or you don't want to open your markets - it's your choice," he said. "But the reality is ... open market societies are better in their...

Bolivian, Venezuelan presidents grab summit headlines May 12, 2006, 14:54 GMT Vienna - Leaders from the European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean summit were meeting in Vienna Friday with the gathering threatening to be hijacked by the leftist populist presidents of Bolivia and Venezuela. Speaking to reporters as leaders attending the two-day summit entered a round of key talks, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan joined government chiefs attending the meeting in sharply criticizing Bolivian President Evo Morales and his Venezuelan ally, Hugo Chavez. 'Populism is one the obstacles to development (of Latin America and the Caribbean),' Mexican President Vicente...

LONDON (Reuters) - Bolivia's decision to nationalize its gas fields weighed on shares in companies active in the country on Tuesday, but analysts said the long-term impact on foreign firms would be small. President Evo Morales said on Monday he had ordered the military to occupy Bolivia's natural gas fields and threatened to expel foreign firms that do not recognize state control. Spain's Repsol YPF (REP.MC: Quote, Profile, Research), the most exposed of the Western oil majors to Bolivia, opened down 3 percent, while British gas firm BG Group Plc (BG.L: Quote, Profile, Research), which has large reserves in Bolivia,...

President Evo Morales nationalized Bolivia's natural gas industry and oil Monday, ordering foreign energy companies to send their supplies to a state company for sales and industrialization. Speaking at the San Alberto gas and oil field in the south of the country, Morales warned that companies that reject the decree will have to leave Bolivia within six months. The main oil companies operating in Bolivia are Brazil's Petrobras, the Spanish-Argentine company Repsol YPF, British companies British Gas and British Petroleum and Total of France. "The time has come, the awaited day, a historic day in which Bolivia retakes absolute control...

The election of Evo Morales as president of Bolivia in December prompted a rash of headlines declaring that Latin America has tilted to the left. Latin Americans are fed up, some say, with the "Washington Consensus" of free markets and fiscal discipline, which has failed to erase all their poverty and inequality, and as a result their governments are reverting to protectionism, state ownership of industries and unlimited social spending. But judging from the victory of my social-democratic National Liberation Party in Costa Rica's Feb. 5 elections, our country didn't get the message that all of Latin America is veering...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who plans to attend the inauguration of a socialist in Chile this weekend, says the United States has no quarrel with leftist leaders in Latin America as long as they govern well. "This is a wonderful moment, the inauguration of the Chilean president, a woman president," Rice told a group of Latin American, Asian and Australian reporters Thursday, a day before she began a trip to those places. She was far less enthusiastic about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who frequently calls President Bush a terrorist. But she said the United States wants good relations with...

Note: for those who haven't followed the story, this is the federal district judge in California who has ruled that lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment because the murdering scumbag might suffer. Michael Morales had breakfast this morning. He will have lunch. He will have dinner. He will continue to breathe. Terri hasn't been able to do any of those things for over two decades. ========================================================================== Fogel, Jeremy D. Born 1949 in San Francisco, CA Federal Judicial Service:U. S. District Court, Northern District of CaliforniaNominated by William J. Clinton on September 8, 1997, to a seat vacated by Robert...

San Francisco - The execution of a man convicted of raping and murdering a 17-year-old girl was postponed Tuesday after two anaesthesiologists who were to ensure a painless death withdrew on ethical grounds. The execution of Michael Morales, 46, had been scheduled for 12.01 a.m. Tuesday after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and U.S. courts denied his final appeals. But the two anaesthesiologists cited concerns over a last-minute ruling by a judge who ordered them to intervene in the event that Morales woke up or appeared to be in pain from the administering of the lethal combination of drugs. "Any such intervention...

SAN QUENTIN, California (Reuters) - The execution of a California man who raped and murdered an 17-year-old girl was delayed for at least 15 hours early on Tuesday because two court-appointed anesthesiologists walked off the job over ethical concerns. The doctors backed out when the language in an early-morning U.S. District Court ruling did not sufficiently allay their ethical concerns, San Quentin State prison spokesman Lt. Vernell Crittendon said. They were on hand after a court said the state must ensure the condemned man, Michael Morales, was in fact unconscious before a lethal injection was administered, thereby minimizing the pain...