#Including the military industrial complex being a major turn off

[sprout-fics]

Don't waste your time with men who won't make time for you.

[haberdashing]

i get where your last post about nuking gaza off the face of the earth is like...coming from. but just beware people using it to be like "yeah! jews control the media!" bc that's not a good take either... i think the take away should be listen to many different journalists from many different agencies and dont just trust one source of news as your only source. and if you find yourself responding with "so that's why the other side is the sole problem!!" then you are being swayed. there are many bad actors in this with biiiig focus on the United States, the British, and specifically Netanyahu's right wing government, but also shout out to UNRWA, the EU, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iran for throwing their influence in the ring. Like I don't like the IDF either but I feel like that last post might have nazis secretly loving it for it's "jew media control" conspiracy vibes.

Oh absolutely!

In fact, I've been considering making a post about my thoughts on Israel, and I think this ask might be the impetus I need to get that going. (For better or for worse.)

So:

Israel, as the country, is clearly in the wrong here. This is literal war crime. This is literal genocide. Israel and its allies are on the wrong side of history.

BUT:

The Israeli people, by and large, are not to blame for this.

There are a lot of parallels with the American government, actually. Including how normalized the military industrial complex is, how pro-military propaganda is rampant throughout society. So if you're an American citizen like I am, you understand that those in the low levels of the military are by and large victims of the system, too.

Now imagine that the right-wing kooks who claim that our society is under attack, literally... could point to actual wars on our soil only a couple decades ago, could point not to one terrorist attack twenty years ago but an ongoing regime of them, could claim that every historical instance of antisemitism fits into this same pattern and that antisemitism and criticism of Israeli society are one and the same.

And, oh yeah, imagine that everybody who turns eighteen gets drafted in your society. Not some slim fraction like the Vietnam War draft that still gets maligned here (and rightly so), but everybody. (Barring, presumably, those who get excluded for medical reasons?) You have two choices: serve your country in the military, or go to jail. And everybody talks about military service not only as a duty and an honor but as a coming-of-age experience that everybody knows about and looks forward to.

A few brave Israelis do choose jail over the draft, but the vast majority don't. And with that societal conditioning, can you blame them?

Of course, this doesn't excuse the atrocities. But it does help explain them.

And naturally, Jewish people outside of Israel are even less able to take down this system, even less culpable for the harm it causes. And yet Zionism and antisemitism still get conflated. And yet pro-Palestine rallies still include literal Nazis, which makes them hard to approach for... well, anyone who doesn't want to associate with Nazis, but especially literal Jewish people, who might already be assumed to be pro-Israel just because of that fact.

A bit of the Israeli propaganda does seep through to Jewish culture even outside of Israel, admittedly. My mother is living proof of it. I've only ever heard her comment on the horrible things the Israelis go through here, not the atrocities of Gaza. Because those are her people, in her mind, and the Gaza residents... aren't.

And yes, the Israelis don't have a great lot in this either. But it's still a far sight better than that of Gaza residents right about now.

And that "her people" reference? Not entirely rhetorical. I've been to Israel, as has my father, though it's been over a decade in both cases. We have family friends from there. We have friends of friends who are there. Heck, two friends-of-a-friend that I know about, or people at similar levels of not-quite-connectedness, are in the IDF.

Obviously not all Jewish people are connected. I bet my college friend from rural Mississippi would have a different experience, despite also being Jewish. But my mother still keeps in touch with temple friends who can be a close-knit bunch, and there's ties to Israel, including the Israeli military, in there.

So where does that leave me?

I've been wondering that more and more as the days go on.

Am I honor bound to talk to my mother about this, to get her to recognize the war crimes and the genocide being committed by "her people" in Israel? Even if I try, I doubt she'll turn against Israel entirely. But do I still have to try?

Is it okay to wish friends-of-a-friend in the IDF well, even while condemning the actions of the IDF as a whole?

Can I speak up in favor of Palestine without being seen as a traitor to my fellow Jews, and without keeping company with those who see the current situation as a vent for their antisemitism?

How do I, a Jewish American, thread the needle between condemning Israel and supporting my pro-Israel Jewish friends and family?

I don't know. I don't have an answer to this. I really wish I did.

[cherishmii]

STARBOUND !

INTRODUCING....!

𐙚 "Psych Ward" Group chat members!

✩ ⋆ y/nbun: beginning with a keen interest in painting because of her brother Albedo. Samii majored in fine art and performance art, discovering and thriving in a variety of artistic mediums and becoming well-known in her classes for her adaptability. Her skill caught the attention of an idol industry, but after just four months, she left for unspecified reasons and went on to become one of the most well-known streamers worldwide. She got immortal after a week shortly after blowing up when she topped frag in valorant on her first attempt.

✩ ⋆ yoiboom: With a lifetime love of fireworks originating from her father's firework business, Yoimiya studies Pyrotechnics Design and Safety in addition to Entertainment Technology. When she eventually runs into y/n, they decide to work together on y/n's idol debut. Thanks to Yoimiya's skills, y/n's first performance will be a captivating display for her audience. Then y/n began to bond with her, soon yoimiya joins her casually in streaming.

✩ ⋆ luminenoturs: The past and its complex history have always piqued Lumine's curiosity as a driven young woman. Majoring in Global History, she almost embarked on a path to Military Academies and the Naval Academy (Navy), but she ultimately realized that solving civilizations' mysteries was her actual calling or whatever. Alongside her twin brother Aether, who shares her fervor for historical knowledge, things changed for the better when she met y/n who was drawing a statue replica at random museum.

✩ ⋆ theoneandoni: Meet Itto, an outgoing, hyperactive person whose energy has no limits. This meeting with Yoimiya and Y/N at a corporation was an important turning point in Itto's career as a choreographer. He majored in Hip Hop Dance and historical European martial arts. Y/n made his career take off despite being initially ignored, and ever since, itto has been attached to her.

✩ ⋆ Thoma_: Tohma is a committed student who is studying Historical European Martial Arts and ArchaeologyHe became close with their close-knit circle of friends, including Y/N, through his friendship with Itto from their same class. Tohma balances a strict side work at the Kamisato Estate to make ends meet despite his academic goals, frequently disregarding meals in the process. though, y/n make sure he eats. or else...

✩ ⋆ mrheizou: Heizou he charming campus hottie with skills that go beyond just a crush. Heizou is a criminology student who has a talent for quickly locating people's digital footprints, which makes him popular and fascinating among his peers. When he accidentally bumped into Y/N and tried to flirt, Y/N responded cleverly by squeezing his cheeks and laughingly rejecting him. This was his first incident with Y/N. They had a funny beginning, but their friendship grew and they have been great friends ever since.

In the increasingly popular field of online streaming, where gamers rise to fame and ties transcend the lines between visuals and reality, 'StarBound' follows the journey of Y/n and Scaramouche, two top streamers with opposing personalities." As they manage contests, rivalries, and the pressures of fame, their surprising cooperation develops a deeper bond that transcends screens. But what kind of a spark? Was it a case of hatred or love?

> STARBOUND !

[gffa]

OKAY, I WILL DO MY BEST HERE, but it’s one of those cases where there’s A LOT of information and NOT A LOT of information at the same time!  We have a bunch of details and some good general ideas, but it’s not like it was a set-in-stone process, so there’s plenty of wiggle room if you want it. The Inquisitorius was started in 19 BBY, the same year as the fall of the Republic and the genocide of the Jedi, but seems to have been officially started after the Purge happened.  Sidious had been planning something like the  Inquisitorius for a long time, but this specific version of them wasn’t necessarily always the only version in development. The Inquisitors are all fallen Jedi, presumably ones that were captured by the Empire and tortured into becoming dark siders.  Several of them have mentioned that they were former Jedi, but the only one we’ve seen the process of is Trilla Suduri, who we saw being tortured for a very long time in Jedi: Fallen Order.  (Link of the relevant scenes here.  Warning:  It can be a bit of a tough watch, Trilla is physically tortured and some of it you see from her perspective, as the electricity is jolted into her body, which can be kinda disturbing.)  So, in theory, it’s possible that some of them fell on their own and agreed to join, but the one explicit example we have is where she was tortured into it and, while Cal is walking around their fortress, he talks about how multiple Jedi were broken there. (For another example, Prosset Dibs is a Jedi we saw falling to the dark in the Mace Windu: Jedi of the Republic comic, so he may have willingly joined or he may have healed while he was working in the Jedi Archives but not all the way and still had to be tortured into joining.) The Inquisitors are under the direct supervision of Darth Vader (after he’d discovered the program, he was put in charge of it), who trains them incredibly harshly--in Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, he’s shown cutting an arm off one of them and basically telling them to suck it up and keep fighting, to remember what loss feels like.

Sometimes they’d work with Darth Vader (the Grand Inquisitor went to the Jedi Temple in 19 BBY with Vader, where they confronted Jocasta Nu, the Ninth Sister went with Vader on a mission to investigate a possible Jedi sighting on Cabarria, Vader took them with when he went to kill Eeth Koth and kidnap his baby daughter, Vader had them with when he went to Mon Cala to confront Lee-Char, etc.), sometimes they operated separately from each other (all the times in Rebels or Jedi: Fallen Order that Kanan, Ezra, or Cal faced them when Vader wasn’t around, etc.), probably based on whatever Vader felt like or whatever Sidious felt like on a given day. The Inquisitorius as a group seem to have some degree of command over Purge Troopers, as they would often be seen leading a group of them (this happened often in Jedi: Fallen Order especially) and they could commandeer military assets (or probably civilian assets as well) if they needed to, so they had a certain amount of leeway when it came to their missions--so long as they didn’t piss off Vader or Sidious. Their main goals were to hunt down any Force-sensitives in the galaxy, whether newly discovered Force-sensitive children, former Jedi (whether they had left the Jedi Order or were Jedi in hiding, it didn’t matter), or even Force-sensitive adults who had never been trained by the Jedi.  They would turn them if they could, but otherwise it was to kill anyone who might possibly be a Force-related threat of any kind.  (What this means for planets like the Bardottens, they’ve never said.) They were greatly successful at their missions, so they wound up killing a great number of Jedi who had made it into hiding, along with Darth Vader being one of the biggest reasons the Jedi were mostly entirely gone by the time of the OT, which was helped along by Vader training the Jedi style out of them.  Part of why he was so harsh to them (including cutting off limbs, etc.) was to force them to be more aggressive and less defensive, to be sharp and quick and fast to overpower Jedi, who were used to a different type of fight. They still had unique talents (as all Force-sensitives are not the same), like Ninth Sister had a great talent for reading emotions (including Vader’s, where she could sense how much he wanted to die),

As well as they weren’t actually Sith.  Only Sidious, Vader, and Maul were Sith, the Inquisitors were dark siders or fallen Jedi or possibly a category unto themselves. They have some sort of headquarters, as seen in Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, where Vader is seen training them in issue #6 (same scene as above where he cuts off their hands or lightsabers their eye out), which is labelled as being on Coruscant, somewhere in The Works in the Industrial District:

There’s a training arena we see there and at least some sort of communication/strategy rooms that Vader and the Grand Inquisitor walk off into, while they discuss the other Inquisitors. Which means it’s a pretty big complex/building, but (according to Wookieepedia and I’ll trust them on this, instead of digging out my copies of the Complete Vehicles and Complete Locations book), it was a building of Sidious’ that he used as a hideout during the Clone Wars. To what extent Vader and the Inquisitorius took it over (whether they just had a few rooms or the entire skyscraper), I don’t think we know?

Later, in issue #20, we see there’s some sort of break room that Vader storms in on, when he returns to Coruscant, that the Inquisitors were sitting around and hanging out in:

From there, it would be reasonable to extrapolate that this was a base for their operations, the place they returned to after they came back from wherever they’d been sent, possibly even this is where they slept and ate and were sheltered in between missions.  But that’s just reasonable conjecture, not hard canon! There is also Fortress Inquisitorius from Jedi: Fallen Order and it’s primary use was that it was where they took the Jedi they were torturing into becoming Inquisitors.  I wouldn’t say it’s an academy, per se, but it was a place that they likely used as a headquarters. In issue #20 of Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, two of the Inquisitors rebel against Vader and he winds up chasing them down and cutting a huge swath of destruction in his path (LOL @ ANAKIN), which Sidious is not exactly pleased about.  He says that he’s going to move the Inquisitorious off Coruscant to another world so this won’t happen again:

The comic was written in 2018 and Jedi: Fallen Order came out about 11 months later in 2019, so the above isn’t necessarily directly referring to that the Inquisitorious were moved to Fortress Inquisitorious on the moon Nur, but it’s also a very reasonable (and probably likely) assumption. We don’t have an exact timeline for when this issue takes place, but it’s minimum three years after Revenge of the Sith (the Mon Cala arc earlier in the comic is set three years post-ROTS), so probably around 15 or 14 BBY.   However, Trilla seems to have been kidnapped much closer to Order 66, so it’s likely that Fortress Inquisitorius existed long before Order 66 happened, it was used to torture Jedi once their genocide happened, but it wasn’t the Inquisitor’s HQ until several years later. We don’t see a lot of Fortress Inquisitorious, the limited amount of areas you can play through it in Jedi: Fallen Order don’t tell you a ton about what goes on there, but it’s a pretty huge underwater skyscraper sized building and you do see several prison cells and at least one training dojo.

The galaxy at large didn’t know about Fortress Inquisitorious on the water moon of Nur or even the majority of the Empire itself didn’t know about it, it was a heavily kept secret. This is where Trilla and the other Jedi were taken, tortured, and forced into becoming Inquisitors and it’s likely that’s where the Inquisitors were based after the shitshow on Coruscant.  It’s a big enough building that it’s likely to have pretty much whatever kind of stuff your clubhouse needs for the Inquisitors!  But we don’t have much hard canon about it, no. As for the Inquisitors themselves, they’re complicated--some of them seemed almost loyal to each other, they would work together at times or even seem to avenge each other, but other times they would sneer at each other or mock each other, it seemed like they had a lot of shifting dynamics and probably a lot of it was fear at trying to survive being around Darth Vader. We don’t know for sure how many there specifically are or if, when one of them dies, they’re replaced by another, but it seems like there were at least twelve Inquisitors and we’ve never seen them be replaced, which I think implies that they were only ever meant to be a temporary measure and would be disposed of, as soon as Sidious knew all the Jedi were dead for sure/he could raise a new group of Force-sensitive children from birth. ANYWAY YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN:  LOTS OF INFO BUT NOT A LOT OF INFO.  😂

[antoine-roquentin]

it’s nice that FAIR published this right before the announcement of the us withdrawal from afghanistan, which will inevitably cause a cavalcade of “think of the women” pieces from neocon cutouts in the us press:

The vast majority of the world was against the US attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks in 2001. However, the idea had overwhelming support from the US public, including from Democrats. In fact, when Gallup (Brookings, 1/9/20) asked about the occupation in 2019, there was slightly more support for maintaining troops there among Democrats than Republicans—38% vs. 34%—and slightly less support for withdrawing troops (21% vs. 23%).

Media coverage can partially explain this phenomenon, convincing some and at the least providing cover for those in power. This was not a war of aggression, they insisted. They were not simply there to capture Osama bin Laden (whom the Taliban actually offered to hand over); this was a fight to bring freedom to the oppressed women of the country. As First Lady Laura Bush said:

We respect our mothers, our sisters and daughters. Fighting brutality against women and children is not the expression of a specific culture; it is the acceptance of our common humanity—a commitment shared by people of goodwill on every continent…. The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.

Wars are not fought to liberate women (FAIR.org, 7/26/17), and bombing people is never a feminist activity (FAIR.org, 6/28/20). But the New York Times was among the chief architects in constructing the belief in a phantom feminist war. Within weeks of the invasion (12/2/01), it reported on the “joyful return” of women to college campuses, profiling one student who

strode up the steps tentatively at first, her body covered from face to foot by blue cotton. As she neared the door, she flipped the cloth back over her head, revealing round cheeks, dark ringlets of hair and the searching brown eyes of a student.

The over-the-top symbolism was hard to miss: This was a country changed, and all thanks to the invasion.

Time magazine also played heavily on this angle. Six weeks after the invasion (11/26/01), it told readers that “the greatest pageant of mass liberation since the fight for suffrage” was occurring, as “female faces, shy and bright, emerged from the dark cellars,” casting off their veils and symbolically stomping on them. If the implication was not clear enough, it directly told readers “the sight of jubilation was a holiday gift, a reminder of reasons the war was worth fighting beyond those of basic self-defense.”

“How much better will their lives be now?” Time (12/3/01) asked. Not much better, as it turned out.

A few days later, Time‘s cover (12/3/01) featured a portrait of a blonde, light-skinned Afghan woman, with the words, “Lifting the Veil. The shocking story of how the Taliban brutalized the women of Afghanistan. How much better will their lives be now?”

This was representative of a much wider phenomenon. A study by Carol Stabile and Deepa Kumar published in Media, Culture & Society (9/1/05) found that, in 1999, there were 29 US newspaper articles and 37 broadcast TV reports about women’s rights in Afghanistan. Between 2000 and September 11, 2001, those figures were 15 and 33, respectively. However, in the 16 weeks between September 12 and January 1, 2002, Americans were inundated with stories on the subject, with 93 newspaper articles and 628 TV reports on the subject. Once the real objectives of the war were secure, those figures fell off a cliff.

Antiwar messages were largely absent from corporate news coverage. Indeed, as FAIR founder Jeff Cohen noted in his book Cable News Confidential, CNN executives instructed their staff to constantly counter any images of civilian casualties with pro-war messages, even if “it may start sounding rote.” This sort of coverage helped to push 75% of Democratic voters into supporting the ground war.

As reality set in, it became increasingly difficult to pretend women’s rights in Afghanistan were seriously improving. Women still face the same problems as they did before. As a female Afghan member of parliament told Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies (CounterSpin, 2/17/21), women in Afghanistan have three principal enemies:

One is the Taliban. Two is this group of warlords, disguised as a government, that the US supports. And the third is the US occupation…. If you in the West could get the US occupation out, we’d only have two.

However, Time managed to find a way to tug on the heartstrings of left-leaning audiences to support continued occupation. Featuring a shocking image of an 18-year-old local woman who had her ear and nose cut off, a 2010 cover story (8/9/10) asked readers to wonder “what happens if we leave Afghanistan,” the clear implication being the US must stay to prevent further brutality—despite the fact that the woman’s mutilation occurred after eight years of US occupation (Extra!, 10/10).

Vox (3/4/21) asserted that the US occupation of Afghanistan has meant “better rights for women and children” without offering evidence that that is the case.

The trick is still being used to this day. In March, Vox (3/4/21) credulously reported that Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Gen. Mark Milley made an emotional plea to Biden that he must stay in Afghanistan, otherwise women’s rights “will go back to the Stone Age.” It’s so good to know the upper echelons of the military industrial complex are filled with such passionate feminists.

In reality, nearly 20 years of occupation has only led to a situation where zero percent of Afghans considered themselves to be “thriving” while 85% are “suffering,” according to a Gallup poll. Only one in three girls goes to school, let alone university.

And all of this ignores the fact that the US supported radical Islamist groups and their takeover of the country in the first place, a move that drastically reduced women’s rights. Pre-Taliban, half of university students were women, as were 40% of the country’s doctors, 70% of its teachers and 30% of its civil servants—reflecting the reforms of the Soviet-backed government that the US dedicated massive resources to destroying.

Today, in half of the country’s provinces, fewer than 20% of teachers are female (and in many, fewer than 10% are). Only 37% of adolescent girls can read (compared to 66% of boys). Meanwhile, being a female gynecologist is now considered “one of the most dangerous jobs in the world” (New Statesman, 9/24/14). So much for a new golden age.

The “think of the women” trope is far from unique to Afghanistan. In fact, 19th century British imperial propagandists used the plight of Hindu women in India and Muslim women in Egypt as a pretext to invade and conquer those countries. The tactic’s longevity is perhaps testament to its effectiveness.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Treat Your S(h)elf: Imperial Boredom: Monotony and the British Empire by Jeffrey A. Auerbach (2018)

The British Empire has had a huge impact on the world in which we live. A brief look at an atlas from before World War One will show over hundred colonies that were then part of the Empire but now are part of or wholly sovereign states. Within these states much remains of the commercial, industrial, legal, political and cultural apparatus set up by the British. In many former colonial areas, political issues remain to be solved that had their genesis during the British era.

The legacy of the British has been varied and complex but in recent years much attention has been on making value judgements about whether the Empire was a good or bad thing. Of course the British Empire was built on the use of and the continual threat of state violence and there were appalling examples of the use of force. As well as the slave trade, there was the Amritsar Massacre in 1919, the 1831 Jamaican Christmas Uprising, the Boer War concentration camps (1899-1902) and the bloody response to the Indian Mutiny of 1857. However, we must not just focus on these events but examine the Empire in all of its complexities.

In the current moment of our times, it would seem that as a nation we are more concerned about beating ourselves up and making the nation feel guilty than understanding how and why the British came to exist, and setting the growth of the British Empire into historical context to be wise about the good, the bad, and the ugly. History has to be scrupulously honest if it’s not to fall prey to propaganda on either side of the extreme political spectrum.

Truth be told I find these questions about the British Empire being good or bad either boring or unhelpful. It doesn’t really bring us closer to the complexity and the reality of what the British Empire was and how it was really run and experienced by everyone.

For myself personally the British Empire was part of the fabric of our family history. The Far East, the Middle East and Africa figured prominently and at the centre of which - the jewel in the crown so to speak - was India. In my wider family clan I’ve come to learn about - through handed down family tales, personal diaries, private papers, and photos etc - the diverse experiences of what certain eccentric characters got up to and they ranged from missionaries in India and Africa to military men strewn across the Empire, from titans of commerce in the Far East to tea farmers in East Africa, from senior colonial civil servants in Delhi to soldier-spies on the North West Frontier (now northern Pakistan).

My own experience of being raised in India, Pakistan as well as parts of the Far East was an adventure before being carted off to boarding school back in Britain and then fortunate in later life to be able to travel forth to these memorable childhood places because of the nature of my work. Having learned the local languages and respectful of customs I have always loved to travel and explore deeper into these profound non-Western cultures. Despite the shadow of the empire of the past I am always received with such down to earth kindness and we share a good laugh. So I always assumed that the British Empire played a central role in the life of Britain has it had in our family history just because it was there. But historians are more concerned with much more interesting questions that challenge our assumptions.

So when I was at university it was a great surprise to me to first read a fascinating history of the British Empire by Bernard Porter called ‘The Absent Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society and Culture in Britain’ (2004). Porter was, in his own words, “mainly a response to certain scholars (and some others) who, I felt, had hitherto simplified and exaggerated the impact of ‘imperialism’ on Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, after years in which, except by empire specialists like myself, it had been rather ignored and underplayed. […] the main argument of the book was this: that the ordinary Briton’s relationship to the Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was complex and ambivalent, less soaked in or affected by imperialism than these other scholars claimed – to the extent that many English people, at any rate, possibly even a majority, were almost entirely ignorant of it for most of the nineteenth century.” It became a controversial book but a welcome one because it was well researched and no doubt made some imperial historians choke on their tea dipped biscuits (and that’s not even counting the historically illiterate post-colonial studies crowd in their English faculties who often got their knickers in a twist).

Years later I read another fascinating collection of scholarly chapters by different historians called ‘Anxieties, Fears, and Panic in Colonial Settings: Empires on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’ (2016) edited Harald Fischer-Tiné which challenged a rosy vision of Britain’s imperial past by tracing British imperial emotions: the feelings of fear, anxiety, and panic that gripped many Britons as they moved to foreign lands. To be fair both Robert Peckham’s Empires of Panic: Epidemics and Colonial Anxieties (2015) got there before him but Tiné’s history set the trend for others to follow such as Marc Condos’s The Insecurity State: Punjab and the Making of Colonial Power in British India (2018) and Kim Wagner’s Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre (2019).

They all set out their stall by highlighting the sense of vulnerability felt by the British in the colonies. Fisher-Tiné’s edited book in particular highlights the pervasiveness of feelings of fear, anxiety, and panic in many colonial sites. He acknowledges that: “the history of colonial empires has been shaped to a considerable extent by negative emotions such as anxiety, fear and embarrassment, as well as by the regular occurrence of panics.” 

The book suggests that these excessive emotional states were triggered by three main causes. First, the European population in British India was heavily dependent on Indian servants and subordinates who might retaliate against unfair masters or whose access to European dwellings could be used by malevolent others to poison the white elite. Second, anxieties about the assumed toxic effects of the Indian climate fuelled also poisoning panics. Diseases such as malaria and cholera were considered to be the ultimate outcome of an “atmospheric poison”. Third, Indian therapeutics and the system of medicine were also identified as a potential cause of poisoning European communities. These poisoning panics only helped reinforce the racial categorisations of Indians, the moral supremacy of the white population, and the legitimacy of colonial rule. Overall the book expanded the understanding of how a sense of fragility rather than strength shaped colonial policies.

Now comes another noteworthy book which again sound a little quirky but is no less meticulous in its research and judicious in its observations. Many books about the British Empire focus on what happened; this book concentrates on how people felt. When I was first given it I was predisposed to be negative because here was a book about ‘feelings’ - the current disease of our decaying western culture. But I was pleasantly surprised.

Was the British Empire boring? So asks Jeffrey Auerbach in his irreverent tome, ‘Imperial Boredom: Monotony and the British Empire’ (2018).

It’s an unexpected question, largely because imperial culture was so conspicuously saturated with a sense of adventure. The exploits of explorers, soldiers and proconsuls – dramatised in Boys’ Own-style narratives – captured the imagination of contemporaries and coloured views of Empire for a long time after its end. Even latter-day historians committed to Marxist or postcolonial critiques of Empire tend to assume that the imperialists themselves mostly had a good time. Along with material opportunities for upward mobility, Empire offered what the Pan-Africanist W.E.B. DuBois called ‘the wages of whiteness’ – the psychological satisfactions of membership in a privileged caste – and an escape from the tedium of everyday life in a crowded, urbanised, ever less picturesque Britain.

The British Empire has been firmly tied to myth, adventure, and victory. For many Britons, “the empire was the mythic landscape of romance and adventure. It was that quarter of the globe that was coloured and included darkest Africa and the mysterious East.” Cultural artifacts such as music, films, cigarette cards, and fiction have long constructed and reflected this rosy vision of the empire as a place of adventure and excitement.

Against this widely held view of the empire, As Auerbach argues here, however, the idea of Empire-as-adventure-story is a misleading one. For contemporaries, the promise of exotic thrills in distant lands built up expectations which inevitably collided with reality. 

In a well-researched and enjoyable book, the author argues “that despite the many and famous tales of glory and adventure, a significant and overlooked feature of the nineteenth-century British imperial experience was boredom and disappointment.” In other words, instead of focusing on the exploits of imperial luminaries such as Walter Raleigh, James Cook, Robert Clive, David Livingstone, Cecil Rhodes and others, Auerbach says pay attention to the moments when many travellers, colonial officers, governors, soldiers, and settlers who were gripped by an intense sense of boredom in India, Australia, and southern Africa.

For historians, the challenge is to look past the artifice of texts which conceal and compensate for long stretches of boredom to unravel the truth. Turning away from published memoirs and famous images, therefore, Auerbach trains his eye on the rough drafts of imperial culture: letters, diaries, drawings. He finds that Britons’ quests for novelty, variety and sensory delight in the embrace of 19th-century Empire very often ended in tears. Indeed Auerbach identifies an overwhelming emotion that filled the psyche of many Britons as they moved to new lands: imperial boredom.

Precision in language and terminology is essential and Auerbach begins by setting out what he means by boredom. Adopting Patricia Meyer Spacks’ approach, he points out that the term first came into use in the mid-18th century. Auerbach identifies then the feeling as a “modern construct” closely associated with the mid-18th century where the spread of industrial capitalism and the Enlightenment emphasis on individual rights and happiness that the concept came to the fore. This does not mean that nobody previously suffered from boredom, but that, with the Enlightenment’s emphasis on the individual, this was when the feeling first became conceptualised. Like Spacks, he distinguishes boredom from 19th-century ‘ennui’ or existential world-weariness and also from monotony, which has a much longer history. Whilst a monotonous activity or experience may generate a feeling of boredom, it will not necessarily do so. The two terms must, therefore, not be equated.

Significantly, in a footnote, Auerbach cites a passage from 19th Century English satirical novelist, Fanny Burney, in which an individual is described as ‘monotonous and tiresome’ but, as he emphasises, ‘not boring’. To prevent confusion, the term ‘boring’ is best avoided when describing an activity or experience because this is to beg the question as to whether it does in fact generate feelings of boredom in a particular person.

How then should this state of mind be assessed and what should be seen as the symptoms of imperial boredom? As Auerbach acknowledges, boredom ‘is not a simple emotion, but rather a complex constellation of reactions’. Building on that approach, he says ‘imperial boredom’ reflected ‘a sense of dissatisfaction and disenchantment with the immediate and the particular, and at times with the enterprise of empire more broadly’. If this tends to mix cause and effect, the idea of dissatisfaction and disenchantment essentially mirrors Spacks’ definition of the symptoms of boredom, namely, ‘the incapacity to engage fully: with people, with action, with one’s own ideas’. ‘Imperial boredom’, therefore, was more than a fleeting moment of irritation with a particular situation or person and reflected a mind-set that derived from, and in turn, further contributed to, a sense of disillusionment with the overall project.

It stemmed, so Auerbach argues, from the marked contrast between how empire was represented and how it turned out to be, between ‘the fantasy and the reality’. ‘Empire was constructed as a place of adventure, excitement and picturesque beauty’ but too often lacked these features. Nowhere is this better described than in George Orwell’s Burmese Days, in which the promising young John Flory has become ‘yellow, thin, drunken almost middle-aged’. Beginning with this illustration, Auerbach argues that historians have too often overlooked this essential aspect of empire and sets out to discover the extent to which it was characteristic of what Flory called the ‘Pox Britannica’ more generally.

During the 17th century the British Empire sustained itself on the story that the colonial experience was both righteous and unbelievably exciting. Sea voyages were difficult, and when one eventually did reach landfall there was a good chance of violence, but the exotic foreign cultures, the landscapes, and the wildlife made the trip worthwhile. The British colonialist was meant to be swashbuckling. Advertisements for even the most banal household goods offered colourful and robust propaganda for life in the colonies. Travelogues and illustrated accounts of colonial exploration were wildly lucrative for London publishing houses. All of this attracted a crowd of young Brits eager to escape the drudgery of life in the metropole.

By the 19th century, expectations were catching up. As Auerbach makes it clear, from the beginning, the sense of boredom experienced by many Britons in new colonial settings was much more profound during the nineteenth century. Indeed, the latter was marked by a series of bewildering social, cultural, and technological changes that stripped the empire of its sense of novelty. The development of new means of transport such as steamships, the rise of tourism, and the proliferation of guidebooks jeopardised the sense of risk, newness, enthusiasm that had long been associated with the British imperial experience. Consequently, while “the early empire may have been about wonder and marvel, the nineteenth century was far less exciting and satisfying project.

Auerbach spent 20 years gathering evidence spanning the late 18th century to the turn of the 20th, which records feelings of being bored, miserable and deflated. It’s a captivating history of imperial tedium drawn from memoirs, diaries, private letters and official correspondence. In “reading against the grain”, as Auerbach puts it, he has focused on recorded events normally skimmed over by historians, precisely for being boring – multiple entries repeated over and over again about the weather, train times, shipping forecasts, deliveries, lists and marching; or about nothing ever happening.

In five thematic chapters, “Voyages”, Landscapes,” Governors,” Soldiers”, and “Settlers,” Auerbach shines new light on the experience of traversing, viewing, governing, defending and settling the empire from the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. The monotonous nature of the sea voyage, dreary and uninteresting imperial lands, daily routine, depressingly dull dispatches, mind-numbing meetings are some of the sources of an utter sense of imperial boredom.

Whilst the first chapter, Voyages, may be the logical starting-point, it presents particular problems. They may have been monotonous, but it is unlikely that they would have engendered feelings of disenchantment and disillusion at the outset of an empire life or career. Auerbach begins with the somewhat surprising assertion that ‘not until the first half of the 19th century did long-distance ocean travel become truly monotonous’, arguing that this was because, until then, the weather had been ‘a source of danger and discomfort’ whereas, by the mid-19th century, ‘it was barely worth mentioning’. Leaving aside the obvious difficulties with that approach – many 19th-century travellers, assuming they survived, described enduring terrifying typhoons in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea – voyages certainly could be monotonous, particularly, when steam replaced sail.

However, his assertion that this ‘helped to produce feelings of boredom that had never been felt before’ is more questionable. For example, whilst Sir Edmund Fremantle (1836–1929) wrote in his memoirs that, although the sea passages were ‘monotonous’, ‘it never occurred to [him] to be bored’, Auerbach suggests that, ‘in several places his memories [sic] belie his claims’, in that they refer to the ‘the monotony’ of various experiences, including cruising out of harbour under steam rather than under sail, which ‘always possessed some interest’. But, this not only contradicts what Fremantle wrote but also equates boredom with monotony and, thus, deprives it of any proper meaning.

Similarly, because the Royal Naval Surgeon, Edward Cree (1814–1901) recorded his passing the time ‘reading, drawing, walking on deck, eating drinking and sleeping’, Auerbach concludes that ‘almost every leg of his 1839 journey to the East was boring or disappointing’. However, he omits the opening words of this journal entry which reads, ‘making but slow progress towards China. Weather intolerably hot … The time passes pleasantly enough on board’, which suggests he was certainly not bored. Much of this chapter is not concerned with monotony but with how ‘dreadful’ sea voyages could be, particularly, for travellers to Australia, most of all transported convicts, who, as he shows, had to endure the most brutal conditions. But they had no expectations of empire and this seems to add little to the understanding of imperial boredom.

It may well be that, because voyages were so unpleasant, travellers became all the more expectant and thus disappointed, when, on arriving, they found, as Auerbach argues in the next chapter, that much of the landscape was dreary and uninteresting. Moreover, many could not decide whether they were in search of a landscape that was picturesque and exotic or ‘normalised’ by reproducing English architecture, gardens and surroundings. This dichotomy generated further disenchantment.

If Auerbach dwells too long on obscure painters who often had little success in making these imperial landscapes picturesque, there is no doubt that many of them were monotonous, not least the vast tracts of Australian out- back. Consequently, whilst ‘the early empire may have been about wonder and marvel, the 19th century was a far less exciting and satisfying project’ and this contributed to feelings of boredom.

In the chapter, ‘Governors’, Auerbach essentially covers the administration of the empire. Here, there was also a lot of monotony, although Auerbach wavers between whether this was caused by having too much or too little work to do. Either way, it leads to the assertion that ‘throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, British imperial administrators at all levels were bored by their experience, serving king or queen and country’. However, this is qualified in the next paragraph, in which he cites the Marquess of Hastings, who served in India in the early 1800s, and Lord Curzon, who served as Viceroy at the end of the century, neither of whom, he says, suffered from boredom. It was ‘during the middle decades, that imperial service was far less stimulating’ but he does not explain why it should have been limited to this particular phase.

Indeed, in terms of the staggering quantity of paper generated by the ICS, the problem stretched back to the early 18th century. Records were copied and recopied, and months were spent waiting on instruction from London. The few encounters with colonised subjects came in the form of long, drawn-out formal events. Lord Lytton as Viceroy of India between 1876-1880 was required to bow 1230 times during one particularly ceremonial reception with the Viceroy.

Whilst it is ultimately fruitless to exchange examples of officials who did and did not find government service boring, some of those chosen by Auerbach are not convincing. James Pope Hennessy, for example, the eccentric Irishman who delighted in antagonising the colonials and endearing himself to the indigenous people with his unconventional views on racial equality, certainly found the European life-style monotonous but, as a result, made sure he kept ceaselessly active. In the words of his biographer, ‘the chief impression [he] made on British and Orientals alike was one of superlative vitality. “He would do better”, wrote Sir Harry Parkes “if he had less life”’,  Coming from Parkes, that arch- imperialist, who allegedly died from over-work and could never have been bored, the comment is telling.

While idleness certainly contributed to boredom, it was often the labour of maintaining colonial control that proved to be the most dull. Increasingly professionalised, the management of the colonies became characterised by strict report-making, bookkeeping and low-stakes decision-making related to staff. Whilst these officials may have become disenchanted, it is unclear what sort of mind-set they had when they started out: according to Auerbach, ‘they may well have entered imperial service out of a sense of duty, or perhaps looking forward to a colonial sinecure that offered status and adventure as well as a generous salary, but instead found themselves inundated by a volume of paperwork and official obligations that they had never anticipated, and which they found to be, quite frankly boring’. As a result, they were ‘eager to escape the tedium of the empire they had built’.

Whilst this suggests that, as a result, they threw up their empire careers, the example of Sir Frank Swettenham does not seem to fit the picture. He may have found life from time to time ‘extraordinarily dull’, but he continued as a government official in the Malay States for thirty years, before retiring in 1901. His belief in the imperial cause seems to have overcome the dullness and trumped any possible disenchantment.

In the chapter entitled, Soldiers, Auerbach concedes that ‘the link between military service and boredom can be traced at least to the mid-eighteenth century’. However, he argues, what was different in the 19th century was that boredom was no longer simply ‘incidental or ‘peripheral;’ it was ‘omnipresent’ and this was ‘a function of unmet expectations’, namely, the unsatisfied thirst for action and bloody combat as the ‘small wars’ of the Victorian age became shorter and fewer. However, citing Maeland and Brunstad’s Enduring Military Boredom, he concedes that this omnipresent boredom is a ‘condition that persists to the present day, especially among enlisted men’. This, therefore, divests it of any imperial character and suggests that it was, and remains a feature of modern military service.

Nonetheless, it would have been interesting to know how this boredom affected the performance of the military in the context of empire. Certainly, it gave rise to some of its more unsavoury aspects, with drunken soldiers brawling and beating up the locals and spending much of their time in the local brothels.

According to Richard Holmes, by 1899, there was ‘a real crisis’ in the infection rates of venereal disease of British soldiers in the Indian Army: ‘for every genteel bungalow on the cantonment … there were a dozen young men, denizens of a wholly different world, crossing the cultural divide every night’. Here was imperial boredom in the raw and urgent measures had to be taken to abate its consequences.

Although the final chapter is entitled ‘Settlers’, it encompasses a much broader category of imperial agents, including women, who until this point have been little- mentioned, and, in particular, women in India ‘most of whom went there in their early twenties to work (or to accompany their husbands who were working) and then typically left by the time they reached their fifties to retire in Britain’. It is unclear why these women and, indeed the whole topic of women in empire, should be subsumed under this chapter heading, given their importance in the empire project and the attention given to them in post-colonial scholarship.

In recent scholarship, empire white women have been frequently misrepresented and lampooned in the literature, including the novels of E. M. Forster, George Orwell, and Paul Scott and all too often reincarnated as representing the worst side of the ruling group – its racism, petty snobbishness and pervading aura of superiority and shown as shallow, self-centred and pre-occupied with maintaining the hierarchy of their narrow social worlds. They have invariably been portrayed as both bored and boring.

The wives of these officials were encouraged to run their households in a similar way, managing a large domestic staff and keeping a meticulous watch on financial expenditures. Socially, they were faced with constant garden parties and dinners with whatever small group of colonial families lived nearby. It’s difficult to imagine just how dull the existence of these administrators must have been, yet in reading these colonial accounts, the temporality and the totalising effects of boredom feel undeniably similar to the way that we describe the monotony of work today.

Auerbach effectively reiterates the trope as a clichéd illustration of a female, reclining aimlessly on a chaise longue, conjuring up the familiar image of ‘the same women [who] met day after day to eat the same meals and exchange the same banal pleasantries’ and concluding that ‘it was not only in India that women were bored, which suggests that the phenomenon was not a localised one, but a broader imperial one’.

Of course many western women did find life in empire monotonous and suffered from boredom, if not depression, and no doubt many were insufferable, as were their husbands, but there is an alternative image and the analysis is so generalised that their contribution is, once again, in danger of being dismissed out of hand.

A more nuanced approach would have examined ways in which women overcame their boredom by pursuing activities in which they were anything but bored, including, most obviously, the missions, a category which, despite its importance, does not feature, save for one cursory comment to the effect that, ‘even missionary women, whose sense of purpose presumably kept them inspired, could find themselves bored’. The example given is that of Elizabeth Lees Price, who, at one point during her eventful life, had to help run three schools for 30,000 pupils. But, just because her diary recorded ‘with increasing frequency’ the comment ‘nothing has happened’, it seems a stretch to infer, as Auerbach does, that ‘not even missionary work was enough to stave off the boredom that afflicted women all across the empire’.

For Auerbach, recuperating boredom means reframing the experience of empire as one of failure and disappointment. In the context of colonial scholarship, which tends to focus on the violence of colonialism and the myth-making that went along with it, Auerbach’s book is rather counter-intuitive. He drains the power of these myths, looking instead at the accounts of those responsible for building empire from the ground up: “What if they were not heroes or villains, builders or destroyers,” he writes, “but merely unexceptional men and women, young and old, rich and poor, struggling, often without success, to find happiness and economic security in an increasingly alienating world?” The agents of colonialism struggled to find any semblance of agency in the work that they were doing. Imperial time stretched out, deadened over decades of appointment in far off islands and desert outposts: a sort of watered down version of Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” in paradise.

Whilst Auerbach demonstrates that much of empire life was monotonous, to my mind, he is too quick to infer that this monotony necessarily gave rise to feelings of ‘imperial boredom’, properly so-called. He also too easily assumes that, where people were bored, this could only operate in a negative way and, whilst he may be right in concluding that, ultimately, ‘the British were, quite simply bored by their empire’, he fails to draw the evidence together to explore what impact imperial boredom had on the development of empire, for better or worse, during the long 19th century.

If not quite an invention of the 19th century, boredom was a particular preoccupation of the period: the product of new assumptions about the separation of work and leisure and a prominent theme of fin-de-siècle literature. Less clear is whether Auerbach is right to treat boredom separately from other emotional states – anxiety, loneliness, anger, fear – which afflicted the imperialist psyche. After all, a long literary tradition – from Conrad to Maugham, Orwell, Lessing and Greene – describes precisely how those varied shades of neurosis blended into one another.

Besides, a more capacious history of discontent and Empire might help to connect the frustrations of the imperialist experience to the suffering of imperial subjects. When, for instance, did boredom turn to aggression and violence? One danger of Auerbach’s approach in Imperial Boredom is to portray an enervated and under-stimulated, yet still extraordinarily powerful, elite as more or less passive.

As imperial rivalry intensified towards the end of the century, so did the quest for new ways of staving off boredom, not only for men in the British Empire but also for those in the other European empires, and war was one of the most obvious solutions.

As other imperial historians have argued, what Europeans were seeking was everything the nineteenth century, in its drawn-out tedium, had denied them. War as Cambridge historian Christopher Clark has argued, “was going to empower them and restore a sense of agency to their limbs and lives.” Auerbach refers to what Clark called ‘the pleasure culture of war’, citing the example of Adrian de Wiart who, serving in the Boer War, knew ‘once and for all, that war was in my blood. I was determined to fight and I didn’t mind who or what’. But he does not explore the consequences of this mood further, other than to say that these adventurers also ‘ended up bored … and disillusioned’. But, the implications were, arguably, much more far-reaching.

Even if it was not directly causative, this mood was ‘permissive’ of the more direct causes and certainly formed part of the background against which Europe went to war in 1914. It may be thought that it did so in a fit of imperial boredom.

I admire the audacity of Auerbach’s writing and as a revisionist piece of history it has the dash and dare of British imperialism and colonialism. But after reading the book I came away thinking that sweeping statements such as that the empire developed “in a fit of boredom” are a tad unconvincing.

Although he spent about 20 years collecting materials, Auerbach seems not to have visited Africa or India during his research. Had he done so, I doubt if he would all too easily accepted that colonial accounts of being bored represented the full experience. Absent are deeper discussions of how expressions of being bored are linked to racism, arrogance and the need to assert power in exotic, challenging and unstable environments. Emotional detachment, disdain and a demand to be entertained were also part of a well-rehearsed repertoire of domination.

But where Auerbach does succeed is in admirably capturing the texture of everyday imperialist life as few historians have. Most of these examples are compellingly relevant and illustrative of some of the colonial circumstances that drove Britons mad with boredom, challenging one of the enduring myths about the British Empire as a site of exciting adventure.

If you are a lover of histories of white imperial rulers and thumbnail portraits, this book is for you. It’s full of excellent quotes. Lord Lytton, for example, fourth choice to be governor-general of India in 1875 (and appalled by the prospect), later summed up the British Raj as “a despotism of office-boxes tempered by the occasional loss of keys”. It was certainly the case that propaganda about empire and the populist books written about it to make money created false expectations, leading to bitter disillusionment. Nostalgists for the age of pith helmets and pukka sahibs will find little comfort here.

In mining the gap between public bombast and private disillusionment, Auerbach demonstrates that – even for its most privileged beneficiaries – Empire was almost never a place where fantasy became reality. I would suggest that rather than the British Empire being mostly boring, more accurate would be David Livingstone’s verdict on exploratory travel while battling dysentery: “it’s not all fun you know.”

The concept of imperial boredom provides a novel and illuminating lens through which to examine the mind-set of men and women working and living in empire, how it was that, despite the crushing monotony, so many persisted in the endeavour and what this tells us about the empire project more generally. There are all states of mind familiar to historians of empire (in the lives of their subjects, of course). It has long been argued that strategies to relieve moments of white boredom in the empire included cheating and adultery, husband hunting, trophy wife hunting, massive consumption of alcohol, gambling, copious diary and letter writing, taxidermy, berating the servants, prostitution, bird-watching, game hunting, high tea on the verandah, fine pearls and ball gowns, all were par for course in the every day lives for those bored British colonisers.

Auerbach’s book reminds me of a not so nice female character bemoans James Fox’s scandalous but true to life colonial novel White Mischief (1982), as she looked out over the Rift Valley in 1940s colonial Kenya, she declares, “Oh God! Not another fucking beautiful day.”

An earnest post-colonialist studies reader might might feel triggered by such a flippant remark as evidence of all that was wrong with the imperial project but at heart it’s a pitiful lament disguised as boredom at the gilded cage the British built for themselves to capture the enchantment and disenchantment of every day life in the British Empire.

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Roleplaying Races 8: Hobgoblins

 It’s time for another playable race special, and we’re starting off with a classic of fantasy, the hobgoblin, those taller, more militant versions of the goblin race!

Interestingly enough though, hobgoblins didn’t start out as “bigger goblins”, that’s actually a Tolkien thing, in which orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, and the like were all variants of the same general race.

The true origin of hobgoblins lies in their linguistic origins, the “hob” in their name being a synonym for elf, but also being the word for the metal plate on certain fireplaces used as a cooking surface similar to a stove.

In other words, these “hearth-goblins” were in fact a form of house-fey, similar to brownies and the like. However, unlike other house-fey, hobgoblins were a bit more mischievous than other house-fey, causing minor mischief just as often as they did minor chores.

Pathfinder’s hobgoblins, however, definitely lean more towards the Tolkien side though, being taller exaggerations of the big-headed little guys that are the iconic Pathfinder goblin. However, few races have gone through the dramatic changes that hobgoblins have in Pathfinder/Starfinder, having started as taller goblins, then briefly becoming much more human-like, before leaning back towards lanky, exaggerated goblinoids.

Like goblins, hobs are hairless, though some art of them shows them with a full scalp of hair. These have been explained as wigs, complex woven hairpieces made from locks taken from defeated foes over the years. The longer and more elaborate the wig, the more prestigious the hob wearing it, though some hob cultures eschew them as unnecessary frivolity and distraction.

Indeed, hobgoblin society is entirely based around military discipline, being trained from an early age in military matters. As such, military rank is the primary social factor for their society, with non-military support roles filling the lowest rung above slaves. Typical hobgoblin society treats all other races as potential slaves, with elves and dwarves being especially loathed for being hard to break.

This stems, at least in the Golarion setting, from the fact that they were magically created from goblin stock for the purposes of war in ancient times, most likely by fiends, though stories vary on exactly who, though given his love of the race, it is likely to have been the goblin hero-god Hadregash.

However, not all hobgoblin societies are so xenophobic or racial supremacist, and indeed in the time period that 2nd edition takes place, they have founded a society based on trade and industry after the events of the Ironfang Invasion AP called Oprak.

Their fear (they would say disdain) of arcane magic is harder to shake, though, with the majority of casters being either divine or occult, though their peers may fear the latter are arcane casters in disguise. Those arcane casters that do exist are either exiles or alchemists, as the science of true alchemy delights hobgoblins out of an instinctual love of fire and the military applications of many extracts.

The military society aspect of hobgoblins may be hard to shake without major reworking, but how hostile they are to other races and societies is up to you.

 Hobgoblins are surprisingly agile and tough, having no real downside.

Not afraid to utilize underhanded techniques to achieve victory, they also grow familiar with stealth and sneaking.

This is a natural fit for them as well, as they possess darkvision as well.

 Of course, these are merely a baseline. Other hobgoblins, by way of specialization or accident of biology, might have other traits. These include things like having a knack for domination, having long, awkward, yet strong limbs, a strong stance from years of training, A knack for explosives and sabotage, a fearsome demeanor, training to best arcane spellcasters, skill with a slave driver’s whip, scarred skin, a knack for tracking, or perhaps a knack for currying favor after being declared unfit for active duty.

 The vast majority of hobgoblin adventurers are exiles who either chafed under the lifestyle of their people, or were exiled due to some great crime, possibly both. As such, many find themselves joining mercenary companies or adventuring groups not only for safety but also reclaiming a bit of the structure and camaraderie of traveling with armed companions, albeit most are usually looser in their authority than what they are used to. Others that are still part of hobgoblin society might have been sent off by generals hoping to turn exceptional individuals into future leaders with impressive skill sets.

Thanks to their bonuses to two physical stats and no penalties, hobgoblins are not really barred from any class, though obviously they excel the most at physical classes. Most of their true class constraints are cultural, not stat-based, with alchemists being favored over all other arcane casters unless the hobgoblin is that much of an iconoclast. They also have access to the racial archetypes of Fell Rider cavaliers and Ironskin monks, representing savage cavalry leading the charge and monks that treat pain and the enduring of it as the ultimate teacher. They also favor the grenadier alchemist archetype as well.

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Washington D.C: Day 1

Our first stop on our trip was to Lorton, more specifically the Occoquan Historic District. The Occoquan Regional Park is on the land where the inmates of the Lorton Work House Prison worked in the brick kilns. Only one survives today, but it gives you a look at what once took over the large park space by the river. After eating at the cute riverside spot Brickmakers, we walked up the hill to see the nearly complete Turning Point Suffragist Memorial. According to the park’s website, over 150 women were imprisoned at the Lorton Work House in relation to the women’s suffrage movement from June to December of 1917. The “Silent Sentinels”, as the monument described, were the women who peacefully demonstrated outside the White House, but were detained and charged with falsified information. Those charges led them to be imprisoned at Lorton or in the District of Columbia Jail. These brave suffragists, like Carrie Chapman Catt, Alice Paul, and Lucy Burns, were the sparks of change that paved the way for women's rights. Paul and Burns both endured much pain fighting for their rights, like with the notoriously long hunger strikes they would enact when imprisoned. The statues done for Paul and Catt are beautiful depictions and show their strengths as activists. Alice Paul is holding her famous picket sign, MR. PRESIDENT HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIBERTY, to greet you at the beginning of the memorial. After you have rounded out the beautiful garden path, you end with seeing Carrie Chapman Catt with a big bouquet of flowers to symbolize their success. While Paul took the more radicalized approach with Burns which they picked up from British suffragists, Catt was a peaceful activist who took a more amicable approach. Another interesting piece of the memorial was the original White House Fence from Wilson’s time in office on display. It was powerful to see the large black fencing these brave women stood in front of almost daily to fight for their rights. The goal of women’s suffrage never would have been achieved without all of these brave women.

Unveiled in 1876, the Emancipation Memorial (also known as the Freedmen’s Memorial) has been controversial since its unveiling. Though the sculpture of Lincoln and a former enslaved person was funded by free African-Americans, there was some shock during the dedication ceremony in response to the deification of Lincoln and the stance of the African-American male. In his keynote address, Frederick Douglass expressed some criticism for President Lincoln. In the end, Douglass acknowledged an “earnest sympathy” for Lincoln. When talking about this statue in the spring semester, we knew that a stop at this memorial was essential. During a hot afternoon, Lincoln Park was packed with families with their children and their four-legged friends. We took a close look at the statue that has garnered more-recent criticism from activists like Glenn Foster of Palm Collective, who we were fortunate enough to talk to just a few weeks ago. Foster believes that a hidden narrative exists with the statue actively marginalizing African-Americans. “What does it mean for an African-American child to see the statue?” Foster asked. As we saw it with our own eyes, we understood why the memorial was so controversial. Though Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed enslaved persons in the South and made the cessation of slavery the goal of the Union during the Civil War, we were taken aback by the depiction of the man kneeling at Lincoln’s feet. It is problematic, to say the least, and requires a sign for historical context if the city does not take it down. Just across from the Emancipation Memorial is a statue that honors Mary Bethune. As a child of formerly enslaved persons, Bethune became a notable educator, civil rights activist, philanthropist, and feminist. She was the leader of many organizations like the National Association for Colored Women and was an adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She most notably started a school for African-American students in Daytona Beach, Florida, which became Bethune-Cookman University. Throughout the life of “The First Lady of the Struggle,” she never gave up in standing up for the right to improved opportunities for African-Americans. The Bethune monument, which was unveiled in 1974, stood in direct contrast to the feelings we had with the Emancipation Memorial. We may not know what should be done with the depiction of Lincoln, but it certainly requires some sort of action. Lincoln will always be one of the most consequential presidents of our history, but our society must be honest in interpreting his legacy along with that of African-Americans.

We took a quick ride on the Metro over to the L’Enfant Plaza stop to see the memorial for Dwight D. Eisenhower in front of the Department of Education. A statue of a young Eisenhower raised in Abilene, Kansas can be seen looking towards his future of being the General that commanded the D-Day invasion in Nazi-occupied France and the 34th President of the United States. All depictions of Eisenhower and his close allies during his time in the military and the Oval Office are beautifully done. The memorial shows the powerful presence that Eisenhower had in every role that he had. We made sure to also read through the speeches on the back of the marble pedestals, which included his famous farewell address where he warned of a military-industrial complex. During his presidency, Eisenhower sent in Federal troops to ensure the integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. His largest project would be the Interstate Highway System, which has been the way that most Americans get around ever since. One can understand why Eisenhower is seen as a President of a higher echelon. We certainly did after viewing this memorial.

In response to the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and in support of calls for justice, Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington D.C. supported the renaming of a section of 16th Street NW to Black Lives Matter Plaza. This section of the street is located at the Lafayette Square end of the White House. This action may have been a jab at the former president, who did not look favorably upon calls for police reform, but it was also a move to show that the city was listening and understood where people were coming from. The vast majority of protests were not composed of “thugs” and “looters” as charged by the media, but involved peaceful calls for ending police brutality and systemic racism. We were able to walk on the bright yellow letters that spelled Black Lives Matter. Though it has been over a year since most people were out in the streets of Washington protesting, the street still felt like a pilgrimage place for all Americans. Saying the words “Black Lives Matter” should not be treated as taboo and it is not claiming that other lives do not matter. BLM is all about the issue at hand, which is that African-Americans are disproportionately targeted by police, even when they are unarmed. Unwarranted killings and attacks by those meant to protect must end, and they must end now. As evidenced by our stop at this living memorial, the movement is here to stay and legislation must be passed in favor of fulfilling justice for all.

After seeing Black Lives Matter Plaza, we took a stroll to Lafayette Square just across from the White House. Just like BLM Plaza, this park is a social hub for tourists and residents alike. It was great to be able to walk upon this park to see the beauty of the White House up close. With the previous President, no one had been able to get very close for a while. Music, voices, laughter, footsteps, and the whirr of the sidewalk scooters filled the air. The beautiful weather made it an even better atmosphere. The one statue that took us off guard while enjoying the grounds was of Andrew Jackson. He is one of the most controversial presidents in American History. His fame originates from being a famous soldier in the wars against Native Americans. Later the “common man” became more popular as he was not an elitist running for president. Duels were something he took part in quite frequently as we have learned. Rebecca Grawl, an alumnae from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and our tour guide for part of DC, told us that he actually had been shot at around 12 times and had 2 bullets lodged in him from previous duels. The worst part of his legacy was the Indian Removal Act of 1830 that led to the infamous Trail of Tears. Thousands of Natives were displaced, died of disease and exhaustion, and were forced out of their homes. Another one of his blunders was his dismantlement of the National Bank. It is ironic that the man who destroyed and hated the national currency of the United States resides on the twenty dollar bill. Another fact learned from Rebecca Grawl was that his equestrian statue is wrong. There is a rule for when there is an equestrian statue built for someone - the front two feet symbolize how the rider passed away. Two feet on the ground means that they died of natural causes, one foot off of the ground means they died due to an injury or disease from battle, and two feet off the ground means they were killed in battle. Jackson’s horse has two feet off of the ground, yet he was not killed in battle. Despite his title of being an American president and winning the popular vote three times for president, his legacy is troubling to say the least.

Our last stop for the day before heading to Shake Shack (YUM!) was the World War I Memorial. It is unfinished, but what is complete is absolutely stunning. A statue of John J. Pershing towers over the memorial representing his incredible military leadership of U.S. troops during The Great War. Beside his grand statue are maps engraved in gold, red, and blue on black granite with descriptions of each campaign. This is a place for reflection and education as many of those lost in the war may only have distant descendants living and those who visit are mostly coming to learn. The largest unfinished part of the memorial is right behind the small pool of water. A Soldier’s Journey is a large sculpture that follows a young male soldier through the “myth of a hero’s journey” from home, to the battlefront, and his return home where he is changed from the war. This part of the memorial will be complete in 2024 and we all are eager to return to see the finished product.

[michelleleisureblogs]

Historical Facts About Two African Countries

Hidden Truth Behind Madagascar

If you’ve watched any kind of documentary, or show, or incredibly accurate cartoon depiction of “Madagascar” I’m sure you are fully aware of how unique and distinct the country is when it comes to nature. The Malagasy have quite a unique story too when it comes to the history of the people. The people of Madagascar had trade agreements with the rest of the continent of Africa during the pre-colonial times, most of their trade was with people in modern-day Mozambique, this marina rulers of Madagascar welcomed the English missionaries and soon the island had converted to the Christian faith. 

This conversion to Christianity led to the modernization of Madagascar society which led to the development of schools, medical center, and industries, the Malagasy people believed that their embrace of Christianity and modernity would save them from colonialism but unfortunately, these Africans did not understand that this arm of Christianity was into empire building and not in the sole business. Fast-forward to 1884 the French army launched their attack on the Malagasy people to expand the French empire but the Malagasy people fought a good fight and the war ended in a stalemate. However, in 1895 the French came back twice as tall to burn the country down which utterly destroyed the nearest marina rulership and the wolf of French colonialism was established in place across the island. The French war brought devastation as they mutated the resources and they did not invest in infrastructural development and only split resources out to France. The Malagasy who had strived to stay independent were now French citizens or French subjects until the 1960s when they eventually won their political independence.

Evil Queen of Madagascar

Queen Ranavalona, the Mad Queen of Madagascar was responsible for the killing of 75 percent of her subjects. Whenever she questioned the loyalty of her members of the Madagascar military, she arranged a “fair” and “just” way to allow them to prove their loyalty, by simply telling them to eat three raw chicken skins, no trial, no evidence, no jury, they just have to eat three raw chicken skins to prove their loyalty to the Queen and they will be free to go. After wolfing down the first skin, followed by the second, and finally after a few nauseous gulps, the last, the raw skins slide down their throat covered in slime and they get the urge to vomit. They can’t help it and vomit two of the chicken skins and fail her test and are then pronounced guilty and sentenced to death by the Queen. A strict traditionalist, Queen Ranavalona believed in the old ways of her people and for her accession ceremony had her naked body anointed with the blood of a freshly slain bull, which was fitting for a woman who would spill the blood of millions. After which, she put the royal family to death in a variety of ways. She was responsible for the murder of several Christians, who were sometimes hung over a ravine or cliff’s edge with ropes, and left there without food and water, while their friends and family would be forced to watch until at last the ropes frayed and sent the condemned to their quick death on the rocks below.

Incredible Facts about Madagascar

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, almost one in ten Malagasies smoke weed, which’s a higher percentage than they do in the Netherlands, making it an ideal place (to avoid) when looking for a good vacation.

The North-Eastern part of Madagascar is known to produce close to 80% of the world’s vanilla, which is one of the most expensive flavours. A kind of large wrap made of various kinds of fabrics in patterns and colours usually worn by the Malagasy people.

The behaviour of the Malagasy people is seriously governed by thousands of cultural taboos, or fady, many of which include no funerals or farming on Tuesdays, no use of shovels with firm handles to bury the dead, or no eating of eels and goats.

It has become one of the most recent countries to abolish capital punishment but surprisingly is still the 14th least happy country according to the World Happiness Report.

Despite the poverty, Madagascar is home to some top-notch luxurious tourist sites and spas. Start saving up though, doubles cost from £3,220 a night.

Lamba is a traditional garment worn by Malagasies, both men and women. 

Bare-knuckle fighting, called moraingy, is a very popular sport throughout the island, as well as in Reunion, 300 miles to the east.

 TANZANIA; BEYOND TANGA IN THE LAND OF THE BLACKS

Tanzania, a well-known East African country, home to the tallest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro, was formed in 1964 as Tanganyika united with Zanzibar to form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, then after 6 months, it was changed to Tanzania. But before we take a journey about Tanzania let’s talk a bit about Tanganyika and Zanzibar.

Tanganyika, a geographical entity that comprises a large part of the mainland of Tanzania was a sovereign state from 1961 to 1964. During the 1880s, the German colonists took over the area and in 1891 was declared a protectorate as part of German East Africa. After World-War I, Britain took over the protectorate and gave it the name Tanganyika under the league-of nations mandate in 1922 which means “what is beyond Tanga”, later it was turned into a United Nations Trust Territory after World War II due to its wonderful qualities in its geography, topography, climate, geopolitics, etc. Interesting to note, Tanganyika was instrumental in World war II as 100, 000 People joined the Allied Forces (Countries that opposed the Axis powers during world war II) and also were part of the 375,000 British colonial troops who fought against Germany and Japan. In 1957, there only 15 towns with over 5000 inhabitants with the former capital of Tanzania having the highest population at the time of more than 125,000 people. During this time, the British had a problem which was the Tanganyika’s ethnic and economic makeup which created issues for them in as much they had a policy which was focused on the continuation of the European presence but they still had to be responsive to the political demands of the Africans there. On route to independence, five UN missions visited the country and received hundreds of written petitions as well as oral presentations made in New York City. All these as the Africans who used the UN to achieve their purposes were key in driving the country towards independence. And in 1961, Tanganyika became an independent state. Now to our neighbor, Zanzibar

Zanzibar, an island located in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa. Interesting to note Zanzibar means land of the blacks. Going as far back as the 16th century, the island was under the domination of the Portuguese but was taken over by Omani Arabs in the 18th century. After taking over, Sultan Seyyid decided to move his capital from Muscat (which is the most populated and popular city in Oman) to Zanzibar. This decision made the island to be at the center of trade for spices. Did you know that in the early 20th century, the island produced nearly 90% of the world’s supply of Spices. Also, the island became a major transit point for the slave trade in the Indian Ocean. But as you know, “When men have ambition, with no limit, they fall”, this is exactly what happened to the Oman Empire, in 1890, the island became a British protectorate. Although it was a British Protectorate, the British ruled through the sultan. Zanzibar, on the path to independence, got theirs from the United Kingdom in 1963, making the nation to be a Constitutional monarchy ruled by its Sultan. Then in 1964, there was a revolt against the sultan, and a new government was formed with Abeid Karume, who was the president and chairman of the Revolutionary Council. During the few days of revolt known as the Zanzibar Revolution, thousands of people lost their lives, comprising mostly Arabs and Indians. Also during this time, the Tanganyika army took part in the revolt then Julius Kambarage Nyerere who was a Tanzanian anti-colonial activist asked Britain to send troops. The troops came ashore from aircraft carriers. The troops’ operations were successful in the disbanding of the military, after the whole operation, the Britain troops left and were replaced with Canadian troops. After some time, on 26th April 1964 Zanzibar united with Tanganyika to form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar which is also Tanzania.

Now that we have a clearer view of Tanzania, we can have a touch of its history. After the union of the two states, the two ruling parties in each state merged to form the Chama cha Mapinduzi Revolutionary Party in 1977. The merge occurred due to the belief of Nyerere which was that, multiple political parties, in a nation with diverse or multiple ethnic groups won’t support national unity but will jeopardize it. Also, to promote unity he established Kiswahili as the national language. As time went by, every sector of the state expanded rapidly and nationalizations transformed the government into the largest employer in the country as it was involved in all aspects from retailing to trade to banking thereby making the stage set for corruption. As more complex bureaucratic procedures evolved and a huge increase in tax rates set by officials caused harm to the economy, enormous amounts of public funds were misappropriated and put to ineffective use and the purchasing power continued to decline at a fast rate which all lead to a decline in the economy.

On 19th March 2021, following the sudden death of John Magufuli, Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan became the new president. Still, being the Unitary Presidential Democratic Republic, Tanzania hopes to progress in the oneness of people, in heart and mind.

References

Anon., 2020. Most Evil Queen - Killed 75% Of Her  Subjects. [Online]  Available at: https://www.voicetube.com/v3/videos/141662  [Accessed 17 March 2021].

Chiteji, F.  M. ,. B. D. F. ,. M. A. C. a. I. K., 2021. "Tanzania".  Encyclopedia Britannica. [Online]  Available at: https://www.britannica.com/place/Tanzania  [Accessed 19 March 2021].

GONCHAR, M.,  2019. The New York Times. [Online]  Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/25/learning/25MadagascarGeographyQuiz.html  [Accessed 19 March 2021].

 Authors:

Moronkeji AgbaraOluwa

Nemieboka Boma

Ilechukwu Michelle

[tinyshe]

Why I’m Removing All Articles Related to Vitamins D, C, Zinc and COVID-19

source

Over the past year, I’ve been researching and  writing as much as I can to help you take control of your health, as  fearmongering media and corrupt politicians have destroyed lives and  livelihoods to establish global control of the world’s population, using the  COVID-19 pandemic as their justification.

I’ve also kept you informed about billionaire-backed  front groups like the Center for Science  in the Public Interest (CSPI), a partner of  Bill Gates’ Alliance for Science, both of whom have led campaigns aimed at  destroying my reputation and censoring the information I share.

Other attackers include HealthGuard, which ranks  health sites based on a certain set of “credibility criteria.” It has sought to  discredit my website by ensuring warnings appear whenever you search for my   articles or enter my website in an internet browser.

Well-Organized  Attack Partnerships Have Formed

HealthGuard, a niche service of NewsGuard, is funded  by the pharma-funded public relations company Publicis  Groupe. Publicis,  in turn, is a partner of the World Economic Forum, which is leading the call  for a “Great Reset” of the global economy and a complete overhaul of our way of  life.

HealthGuard is also partnered with Gates’ Microsoft company, and drug advertising  websites like WebMD and Medscape, as well as the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — the  progressive cancel-culture leader with extensive ties to government and  global think tanks that recently labeled people questioning the COVID-19 vaccine  as a national security threat.

The CCDH has published a hit list naming me as one  of the top 12 individuals responsible for 65% of vaccine “disinformation” on social  media, and who therefore must be deplatformed and silenced for the public good.  In a March 24, 2021, letter1 to the CEO’s of Twitter and Facebook, 12 state  attorneys general called for the removal of our accounts from these platforms,  based on the CCDH’s report.

Two of those state attorneys  general also published an  April 8, 2021, op-ed2 in The Washington Post, calling on Facebook and Twitter to ban  the “anti-vaxxers” identified by the CCDH. The  lack of acceptance of novel gene therapy technology, they claim, is all because  a small group of individuals with a social media presence — myself included —  are successfully misleading the public with lies about nonexistent vaccine  risks.

“The solution is not complicated. It’s time  for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to turn off this  toxic tap and completely remove the small handful of individuals spreading this   fraudulent misinformation,” they wrote.3

Pharma-funded politicians and pharma-captured  health agencies have also relentlessly attacked me and pressured tech monopolies to censor and deplatform me,  removing my ability to express my opinions and speak freely over the past year.

The CCDH also somehow has been allowed to  publish4 in the journal Nature Medicine, calling for the “dismantling” of the “anti-vaccine”  industry. In the article, CCDH founder Imran Ahmed repeats the lie that he “attended and recorded a private, three-day   meeting of the world’s most prominent anti-vaxxers,” when, in fact, what he’s  referring to was a public online conference open to an international audience,  all of whom had access to the recordings as part of their attendance fee.  

The CCDH is also  partnered with another obscure group called Anti-Vax Watch. The picture below  is from an Anti-Vax Watch demonstration outside the halls of Congress.  Ironically, while the CCDH claims to be anti-extremism, you’d be hard-pressed  to find a clearer example of actual extremism than this bizarre duo.5

Gates-Funded  Doctor Demands Terrorist Experts to Attack Me

Most recently, Dr. Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin  Vaccine Institute,6 which  has received tens of millions of dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates  Foundation,7,8,9 — with funds from the foundation most recently being used to create a report  called “Meeting the Challenge of Vaccine Hesitancy,”10,11 — also cited the CCDH in a Nature article in which he calls for cyberwarfare  experts to be enlisted in the war against vaccine safety advocates and people  who are “vaccine hesitant.” He writes:12

“Accurate, targeted counter-messaging from the  global health community is important but insufficient, as is public pressure on   social-media companies. The United Nations and the highest levels of government  must take direct, even confrontational, approaches with Russia, and move to  dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States.

Efforts must expand into the realm of cyber  security, law enforcement, public education and international relations. A  high-level inter-agency task force reporting to the UN secretary-general could   assess the full impact of anti-vaccine aggression, and propose tough, balanced  measures.

The task force should include experts who have  tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear  armament, because anti-science is now approaching similar levels of peril. It  is becoming increasingly clear that advancing immunization requires a   counteroffensive.”

Why is Hotez calling for the use of warfare  tactics on American citizens that have done nothing illegal? In my case, could  it be because I’ve written about the theory that SARS-CoV-2 is an engineered   virus, created through gain-of-function research, and that its release was anticipated  by global elites, as evidenced in Event 201?

It may be. At least those are some of my  alleged “sins,” detailed on page 10 of the CCDH report, “Disinformation Dozen:  The Sequel.”13 Coincidentally enough, the Nature journal has helped cover up gain-of-function  research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, publishing a shoddy zoonotic origins study relied upon my  mainstream media and others, which was riddled with problems.14,15

So, it’s not misinformation  they are afraid of. They’re afraid of the truth getting out. They’re all trying  to cover for the Chinese military and the dangerous mad scientists conducting  gain-of-function work.

You may have noticed our  website was recently unavailable; this was due to direct cyber-attacks launched  against us. We have several layers of protective mechanisms to secure the  website as we’ve anticipated such attacks from malevolent organizations.

What This Means for  You

Through these progressively increasing  stringent measures, I have refused to succumb to these governmental and pharmaceutical  thugs and their relentless attacks. I have been confident and willing to  defend myself in the court of law, as I’ve had everything reviewed by some of   the best attorneys in the country.

Unfortunately, threats have now become very  personal and have intensified to the point I can no longer preserve much of the   information and research I’ve provided to you thus far. These threats are not  legal in nature, and I have limited ability to defend myself against them. If  you can imagine what billionaires and their front groups are capable of, I can  assure you they have been creative in deploying their assets to have this  content removed.

Sadly, I must also  remove my peer reviewed published study16 on the “Evidence Regarding Vitamin D and Risk of COVID-19 and  Its Severity.” It will, however, remain in the highly-respected journal   Nutrients’ website, where you can still access it for free.

The MATH+ hospital treatment protocol for  COVID-19 and the iMASK+ prevention and early outpatient COVID-19 protocol —  both of which are based on the use of vitamins C, D, quercetin, zinc and  melatonin — are available on the Front  Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance’s website. I suggest you bookmark these resources for future reference.

It is with a  heavy heart that I purge my website of valuable information. As noted by Dr.  Peter McCullough during a recent Texas state Senate Health and Human Services  Committee hearing, data shows early treatment could have prevented up to 85% (425,000)  of COVID-19 deaths.17 Yet early treatments were all heavily censored and suppressed.

McCullough, in  addition to being a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the Texas A&M  University Health Sciences Center, also has the distinction of having published  the most papers of any person in the history of his field, and being an editor  of two major medical journals. Despite that, his video, in which he went  through a paper he’d published detailing effective early treatments, was  summarily banned by YouTube in 2020.

“No wonder  we have had 45,000 deaths in Texas. The average person in Texas thinks there’s  no treatment!” McCullough told the senate panel.18 Indeed, people are in dire  need of more information detailing how they can protect their health, not less.  But there’s only so much I  can do to protect myself against current attack strategies.

They’ve moved past censorship. Just what do you  call people who advocate counteroffensive attacks by terrorism and cyberwarfare   experts? You’d think we could have a debate and be protected under free speech  but, no, we’re not allowed. These lunatics are dangerously unhinged.

The U.S. federal government is going along with  the global Great Reset plan (promoted as “building back better”), but this plan  won’t build anything but a technological prison. What we need is a massive   campaign to preserve civil rights, and vote out the pawns who are destroying  our freedom while concentrating wealth and power.

[alexsmitposts]

Blind Faith, Subterfuge and not “Real Issues” will decide US Presidential Elections Voter behaviour is not really so complicated. I once even took a course in it; about all that I can remember is that the “incumbent and name recognition is all that really matters” in getting re-elected, especially for a US President. Regardless of who is the pick for vice president, or whether or not Joe Biden is a Republican at heart with a bad case of both venality and dementia and Trump cannot make truthful statements, the November election is therefore kind of a “toss up”—at least at first impression. Trump is larger than life, whether or not that is a good thing. This worked in his favour last time round, as the outsider candidate against the tainted Hillary Clinton, pillar of the political establishment, the sort who gives representing a relatively left-leaning party a bad name. But this time the US is not electing a new president, it is holding what is effectively a referendum on the incumbent. In 2016 the primary motivation was voting either FOR Trump or FOR Hillary. This time a significant portion of the population will be voting AGAINST Trump, just because it’s him, and his main task will be get these people to stay at home, rather than vote for Biden, even if they have to hold their noses to do so. But with so many Republicans having a problem with Trump, and Democrats having a problem with Sloppy Joe Biden, there will be less interest in engaging WITH, rather than AGAINST, either candidate. If voters act on hate alone, Biden will walk it. But the long campaigning season will probably end with a weary populace ignoring the real issues and voting on the basis of blind faith – that regardless of things like issues and facts, someone, somehow, is going to make their lives better before the whole political system collapses around them. Schoolyard Bully I am dumbfounded at how Trump can blatantly and unapologetically pander to Christians and they eat it up!!! He is reported to have made a statement that if the states don’t open the churches this weekend there will be consequences!!! Trump has many supporters in the South, where they are keen on States´Rights. But Facebook and other social media sites are repeating his nonsense, and throwing their endorsement to Trump. Maybe the man is the genius he says he is after all. He is definitely playing them – what can Facebook do, censor Trump or claim that such statements go against community standards? He has been a genius at one thing for his entire life – getting his own way, and just for the hell of it, regardless of what is right or well-advised. Like the rich kid who learns how to twist his parents in knots, Trump is godlike in his ability to manipulate. He will use any trick in the book, and make up some new ones. This may end up being what the election is actually about. The more Trump lies and cheats and gets away with it, the more the disadvantaged and the crooked, who have fallen by the wayside when playing by the rules, will think he offers hope. The rest of America will then decide whether that is really the world they want to live in for the next four years, in the midst of a succession of crises they often have wilfully unreal ideas about to begin with. As one new American, before the new immigration rules set in, shared, “Trump is not that evil; I don’t think he is Godlike. He is just a compulsive dude with a character. He is simple but knows how to bargain for profits. Why everyone is after him, it’s funny; I have never seen Americans liking their president ever, as they like Trump.” Us against them Versus them against Us Of course this means Trump won’t campaign by the rules either. Other people made those rules, the same people many Americans blame for taking away their jobs and being soft on their enemies. Trump will do whatever he has to do, whatever the cost, ignoring little things like the Constitution, Rule of Law and facts.His latest stunt is to question whether Biden’s VP running mate is qualified to stand for the office, based on her parent’s origins. That is really catering to his base, as he knows only too well that she is in no way disqualified for the office, but many people wish she was. Barack Obama was subject to so much rumour about his own origins that he actually displayed his birth certificate (saying Honolulu, Hawaii, 4th August 1961, i.e. after it had become part of the US) at a press conference. These allegations were never based on fact, but allowed some voters to dress up prejudice as hoped-for fact. Trump joined these allegations, saw they worked, and has been finding new ways to make prejudice seem justified ever since. Constitutional law experts say Harris’ parents are beside the point. The 14th Amendment grants citizenship to all people born in the US, and Article II Section 1 of the Constitution says that to be eligible for the vice presidency and presidency a candidate must be natural-born US citizen, at least 35, and a resident of the United States for a minimum of 14 years. But the Constitution embodies the establishment, and Trump doesn’t consider himself part of it. Many of his supporters feel betrayed by it, their needs and values having been relegated to secondary status, or worse, because they and their friends were never asked to write the Constitution. Trump has lied to his base like he has lied to everyone else. He does it every day, shamelessly. Remember building a wall and making Mexico pay for it, incarcerating Hillary, paying off the debt and stopping wars, let alone the more recent ones about COVID-19 response. But what is escaping critical attention is that the current man in the White House represents the character and morals of the masses of people who make up the country. They won’t admit openly to being everything America pretends it isn’t, which is why Trump is being hammered in the polls, but they will be voting in mass for his re-election. Their core values are the same: family, Church, flag and job security, as if these are the answer to everything in themselves, no actual performance or policy is needed. The vast majority of these voters must feel that they are now being taken care of—for most that means less government, affordable education and healthcare. If Trump makes an about-turn, such as introducing Medicare for all at a price, he will be hoeing in high cotton as the presidential election nears. Blind faith in the system versus blind faith in anything other than the system may not be the best choice to have, as countries which have had revolutions understand. But both sides are gambling that this is how the voters will see it, and that they will choose their faith over the other, and then prosecute it for four years with the same religious fervour so that reality doesn’t come and bite too hard. Bubbling under the Radar Trump may support a small state, but he did a clever move extending Federal Unemployment benefits by executive order, albeit not to the previous level of 600 dollars per week on top of any State benefit. He realised that he had no time to waste, especially in the wake of the economic havoc of COVID-19. Congress went on recess so as not to deal with the COVID-19 crisis, as they knew there was going to be too much pork included in any legislation they would attempt to pass. This could be interpreted as meaning they were outsmarted by Donald Trump, and only one such victory will embolden his supporters to believe there will be many more, which they will interpret as victories for them. Trump’s base of support has closed ranks even more over his monument policy, which makes it a crime to tear down historic monuments. One cannot trash history just because times have changed. I may not like your monument, but let’s talk about it. When the first Democratic debates were held Joe Biden was not most people’s first choice, but I wondered if he had the best chance, since he was old and white and had been VP under Obama. This claim to fame would help him gain the black vote en masse, or so he thought. But this has become a moot issue since Biden scolded black leaders, claiming they would not be black if they voted for Trump. That did not go over well with a voter group which as a whole finds Trump a lowlife, but does not expect to be lectured by a senile “old honky”.Blacks also realised long ago that if they have an equally strong voice within both parties they are more likely to be heard, not taken for granted by the one they support and then ignored, because electorally not worth the effort, by the other. If Biden doesn’t get that, how many other voter groups will he risk alienating between now and November? Biden is the sort of Democrat blacks once deserted his party for being full of – a scion of white privilege, darling of War on Crime (meaning war on blacks, as is Harris), closet racist and blind servant of Wall Street and the Military-Industrial Complex. Maybe this is the real reason he is supposedly polling ahead of Trump in key Electoral College States, even Ohio. However, those with not-so-short memories will remember that the last round of polls before the 2016 election gave Hillary Clinton a commanding lead, and the DNC and mainstream media were so confident of her success they had already printed up the front pages of the newspapers announcing her victory. What makes the pollsters so confident that they will not be even more wrong this time? Trump bashing Biden’s policies and the Democratic National Committee’s platform may soon take all the wind out of Biden’s sails, precisely because it is so easy to bash Trump that it has less effect on the voters. Trump’s policy of America First is also proving consistent, and this is the one campaign promise few people expected him to keep. This does put Trump in the small category of politicians who actually keep their promises, however ironic that is. The return of no point As for the election, only God knows what will happen.It is perfectly possible that the Deep State controls the voting machines by now and the mail-in ballots too!Democrats in Florida are still protesting about the voting machines used there when George W. Bush beat Al Gore by a tiny margin. As James Baker pointed out at the time, they tested the machines before the election and had no complaints. So either there was nothing wrong with the machines, or the count was distorted by those machines. I know which one my money is on. What people are not willing to wake up and accept is that America needs another system, not the two party system, aswhich now supposedly exists. It is an illusion that Republican and Democrat are the only choices, when members of these two parties stay in Congress for decades and little if anything changes. In 1905 Mark Twain wrote his War Prayer, a short story or prose poem described as “a scathing indictment of war, particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervour as motivations for war.” In the days of the Vietnam War, when both war and politics had meaning, this was seen as sarcasm. Now it is a commentary on what the US political system has become, because people are incapable of engaging with real issues because they do not wish to know the truth about their country.

[hutchhitched]

The Vintage Joshifer Series: End of Love—Chapter 18

End of Love by hutchhitched

A kazillion years ago, I started posting this story. I never intended for it to drag on this long in between updates, but life happens and so does writer’s block. I know there’s little readership in the Joshifer fandom anymore, but I needed to finish it. If you’re still around to read it, thank you. If you want to dive in, I’d appreciate it. You definitely don’t have to be a Joshifer fan to read it since Josh and Jen’s characters are historical actors and not versions of their modern selves. There are three more chapters after this one, all of which will be posted this month (fifty years after the events that take place in the final chapter).

 Historical events in this chapter include the following:

The Democratic National Convention took place in Chicago in August 1968. Bobby Kennedy’s assassination (see Chapter 16) threw the convention into chaos since there was no longer a clear front runner. LBJ’s vice president eventually won the nomination, but the real story was outside the convention in the streets where members of the New Left protested—including the Yippies, who nominated a pig for president (3:38). Riots broke out in the streets, and protestors, police, and journalists were all injured.

Not long after the DNC, there was a protest at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, NJ, led by those who were supporters of women’s liberation. The New York Radical Women (NYRW) and National Organization of Women (NOW), and members of consciousness raising groups all participated. Gloria Steinem, who helped found Ms. magazine and just recently toured the country promoting her new book, was one of the founders of NOW.

 Shout out to @xerxia31​ for drawing my attention to the quote, “The version of me you created in your mind is not my responsibility.”

Chicago, Illinois, August 1968

 “Jen, are you working again today?” Amy shouted through the closed bedroom door. When there was no answer, she rapped loudly on the wood.

 Half asleep, Jennifer stretched and rubbed sleep from her eyes.  She rolled over and slipped her arm over Josh’s naked torso and yelled in a sleep-choked voice, “Yeah, I have to be there at noon.  Sleeping in.”

 “I’ll be home late tonight. Be careful.”

 “Thanks, Amy,” she replied and nestled her head into Josh’s shoulder.

 “Yeah, be careful,” he grunted and shifted onto his side.  “Someone might try to take advantage of you or something.”

 “Mmm…  Good morning,” she breathed as he traced her collar bone with the tip of his tongue.

 “Good morning to you. Signs point to it being very, very good.”

 Jen spread her legs and sighed as he settled between them.  His mouth greeted her as if they’d been separated for months, even though they’d spent the majority of the night before high and trying new positions from the Kama Sutra he’d scored from one of his friends at work.

 “I’m not going to be able to walk today if you don’t stop that,” she teased in between sharp intakes of breath.  She twisted her fingers in his hair as she approached her climax and tugged hard.

 “Don’t gripe, doll,” he said as he tore his mouth from her.  “You know you love this.”

 Wrapping her arms around him, she tugged him against her and welcomed him inside.  His long strokes drove her over the edge quickly, and he plunged into her as she gripped and rippled around him.

 When they were finished, he tugged on a pair of bellbottoms with frayed denim hems and walked to the bathroom.  He returned a few minutes later, dropped a kiss on her forehead, and left with only a brief farewell tossed over his shoulder as he walked down the hall. Stunned, she sat up and stared after him, but he didn’t return.

 “Something’s still off,” she muttered before shrugging and dressing for work.

 She’d only been at her new job for a few weeks.  Once she’d decided to take Jack’s advice, things had moved quickly.  She interviewed and got the job within a few days, allowing her to leave her job at the Tribune and take a reporter position at the local NBC affiliate.  It had taken a bit to readjust to reporting news on camera instead of typing it, but she had no regrets.  Her boss at the TV station was a saint compared to Mr. Murrow, and she enjoyed the new relationships she’d developed with her co-workers, most of whom were incredibly good-looking and closer to her age.  The field was an entirely different world than the newsroom, and Josh seemed amused by her stories.

 “Not sure what’s wrong with him today,” she mused as she made her way to work to receive her assignment and camera operator for the day.

 “Jennifer,” her boss called from his office and motioned her inside.  “I want you on the DNC this week.  I know you usually work weekends, but Chicago doesn’t get the convention every year.  You’ve got today and tomorrow to prep, and then you’re on until Thursday.  I need you at the top of your game.  These things are notoriously dull, so you’ll need to create some interest through interviews.  Get people’s ideas.”

 “On the convention floor?”

 “No, you’re outside. I’ve got another team inside the convention itself,” he explained.  “I need you to report on the mood outside the event.”

 “Is anybody going to be hanging around outside?  If people can’t get in, why would they be there?”

 “I put in a call Daley’s office.  The good mayor seems to think there might be trouble.  Police are expecting some more radical groups to be in the streets.”

 “Radical groups,” she murmured.  She’d ask Josh what he’d heard when she got home.  He knew more than she did about who would be there.

 ****

 But Josh wasn’t at home when she got there. She stayed up late, studying and prepping for her assignment, but he didn’t come back.  His clothes still hung in her closet, so she knew he hadn’t bailed on her and would return eventually. Still, his absence grated on her, especially when he didn’t return the next day either.

 She woke early on Wednesday to featherlight kisses on her forehead. Josh settled onto her, pressing her into the mattress and winding his fingers in her hair.

 “I missed you,” he whispered and wiggled his crotch between her legs.

 Grouchy from lack of sleep and even more frustrated he’d been missing for the past two days without any sort of explanation, she snapped, “Where have you been, asshole?”

 She almost smacked him when he chuckled, but she forgave him quickly enough when he explained he’d been planning a demonstration for the day at the DNC. He kissed her softly, lovingly, and she relented. She closed her eyes, let him inside, and moaned when he moved inside her. His political pillow talk excited him more than anything else lately, and he eventually came with a long, guttural growl in her ear. He pulled out quickly and dropped his head between her legs. His mouth worked magic on her. When he kissed her afterwards, she tasted both of them in his mouth. She wasn’t sure why that turned her on so much, but it drove her to beg for another round before she left for her shift.

 ****

 Jen was met by a throng of protestors and twice as many police as she stationed herself outside the convention and attempted to interview as many people in the crowd as would talk to her. She wrangled a conversation with a woman named Katie, who proudly proclaimed herself a member of the Youth International Party.

 “Katie, can you tell us a little bit about why you’re protesting today?” Jen yelled into the microphone and turned it toward the other woman. She bumped into the other woman when someone jostled her, and she strained to hear the answer.

 Katie screamed at the top of her lungs, “Fuck the pigs! The Yippies are here to show how corrupt the police and government are. They support the military industrial complex, sending our boys to die in ’Nam while they wallow in filth in D.C. We’re here to nominate our own candidate, Pigasus the Immortal, because even a pig could run this country better than that asshole in the White House.”

 Jen’s eyes widened imperceptibly, but she schooled her features as best she could. No matter what her interviewees said, she needed to remain neutral and report the news. No matter how radical or extreme, no matter if she agreed with the sentiment or not, her job was to present the facts and share what was unfolding in Grant Park to the rest of the nation.

 As the crowd around her shouted, “Pigs are whores,” she marveled at the irony of nominating a pig for president while simultaneously slandering the police as whores. Tension crackled in the air, and she wondered briefly if Josh was actually somewhere in the crowd like he was supposed to be. Admittedly, while her political bent was less radical than his, she still agreed with a lot of his ideas. This, though, seemed more like it could burst into a riot immediately and not stay just a protest.

 Hours passed, and she kept interviewing, kept side-stepping potential problems, and kept doing her job. As darkness fell, the crowd’s energy ticked higher. Something was going to happen. She could feel it. Thousands of police and national guard and military surrounded the protestors, and all it would take was one spark for the area to erupt.

 Three minutes later it did. Someone threw a rock, the police retaliated, and a full-scale riot broke out in front of her. A Molotov cocktail whizzed over her head, and she motioned to her cameraman to start rolling. She had no idea if the station would pick up her report, but she wasn’t letting this opportunity go. This was a career-maker.

 “As you can see, violence has broken out at the protests outside the Democratic National Convention here in Chicago. It’s 11:00 pm, and city ordinance says that all public parks must be closed at this hour. That hasn’t fazed the protestors, mainly members of the Youth International Party and others of the New Left, who demand an end to American involvement in Vietnam and a rehauling of the federal government.

 “Chicago mayor, Richard Daley, has consistently declared that he will see law and order maintained, and he’s backed up that assertion with over 12,000 police, 5,000 national guard members, and 12,000 regular army troops, according to reports from the mayor’s office itself.

 “Earlier today, Yippies, members of the Youth International Party, nominated a pig for president as a statement about the state of the government. Tonight, the establishment is fighting back. Expect more—”

 Something struck her in the side of the head, and she saw stars. She focused enough to see her cameraman swivel the camera to capture the events, so she could gather herself.

 “Fuck,” she muttered under her breath, careful to keep her voice low in case her microphone was broadcasting. She pressed her fingers to her forehead and grunted at the pain. When she pulled her hand back, she was stunned to find it covered in blood.

 The crowd jostled her, and she realized she needed to get out of harm’s way. Her head hurt, and she swayed when she tried to take a step. Dizzy and confused, she staggered to her left. A few seconds later, she collapsed.

 ****

 “Wake up, Jennifer.”

 The voice was insistent and familiar, and she tried to listen. It hurt too much. Too tired to care, she slid back into darkness.

 “Jennifer Shrader Lawrence. Wake up!”

 “No. Ow. Sleep. Sleep now.”

 “Come on, doll. Wake up. Right now.”

 With a growl, she nudged into the hand cupping her jaw and opened her eyes. The light from a single lamp made her head explode, and she whimpered in pain. It took several seconds for her to focus. When she did, she sighed, “Josh.”

 “You know, you shouldn’t get a bottle thrown at your head. You’re too pretty to carry off a scar on your forehead.” His eyes were filled with concern and a hint of anger, but his lips curved into a gentle smile that made her want to kiss him.

 “Good thing I have bangs,” she joked quietly in an attempt to keep her head from swirling. “How’d we get back here? What time is it?”

 “A buddy of mine gave us a ride. I saw you get hit, and I managed to pick you up before you got trampled. Also, don’t black out in the middle of a riot. That’s just common knowledge.”

 She frowned. “I was working.”

 “You were,” he agreed before adding forcefully. “Now, you’re not. You take a bottle to the head and bleed all over yourself, you’re in no shape to be on TV. And it’s almost 4:00 am. You’ve been out for a while.”

 “I took you away from the protest.”

 Josh didn’t answer. Instead, he put a bag of ice on her forehead where the bottle had hit her right over her right temple. Indicating she should take it from him, he grabbed a bottle of aspirin off the bedside table, popped three into his hand, and put them on her tongue when she opened her mouth.

 “You’re going to be laid up for a few days. You should call your boss when it’s a reasonable hour. He can call in a replacement.”

 “Josh, I need to work.”

 “What you need to do,” he snapped, “is get well. I’m going to sleep. I have to be back out there tomorrow.”

 “You’re going back?” she yelped. “Why? So you can get hurt? There are thousands of police out there and the army and Daley doesn’t give a shit about any of you.”

 “Which is exactly why we’re protesting, Jennifer.”

 “Doesn’t make it smart.”

 “I never said I was smart.”

 Before she could say another word, he flipped off the light and headed to the living room.

 “Where are you going?” she demanded, her anger barely contained.

 “I’ll be on the couch tonight. Go to sleep.”

 “Jackass,” she muttered, but she wasn’t in any shape to drag him back to bed. Instead, she closed her eyes and drifted to sleep. When she woke up the next morning, he was gone.

 ****

“There you are. I thought you weren’t going to make it home before I left.”

 Josh stood in the hallway, his expression unreadable, and Jen zipped her suitcase closed. She rose and crossed to him, but he didn’t reach out for her or return her tentative smile. She really shouldn’t be leaving town when their relationship was on the rocks, but her boss insisted they needed her presence in Atlantic City, that her coverage of the riots not quite two weeks prior had shot her to superstardom—at least as much as a local news correspondent could be. She was the trusted face of news in Chicago and covering the Miss USA pageant would give her a softer side that would solidify her image of being able to report everything in the news cycle. She thought it was bullshit, but she wasn’t really in the position to argue.

 “This isn’t exactly the farewell I was hoping for when I asked you to make sure to say goodbye to me.”

 “You shouldn’t be going,” Josh grumbled, and anger flooded through her.

 “I don’t exactly have a choice, do I?” she snapped. “Not if I want to keep my job. Besides, it’s a beauty pageant. It’s not like I’m going to get hurt again. I’m not covering a riot.”

 “Jennifer, there are consciousness raising groups all over the country headed to Atlantic City. They’re planning all sorts of protests against this—this—this travesty that likens females to cattle. I can’t believe you’re willing to cover something that makes other women look like pieces of meat.”

 He threw up his hands, and she pursed her lips. “It’s my job.”

 “Get a new one, then. You’re supporting the establishment. I thought you were against all the shit—”

 “I’m a journalist, Josh. A journalist, not an activist. That’s your job.”

 He glared at her before whispering, “Maybe you’re not who I thought you were.”

 “The version of me you created in your mind is not my responsibility,” she said, her voice frigid. “I’m leaving. I have a flight to catch.”

 He didn’t stop her when she grabbed her suitcase and stalked past him. She was down the stairs and into the cab before tears spilled over and wet her cheeks.

 ****

 Atlantic City proved to be a lot more than Jennifer expected, and it made her furious that Josh was right. Of course, she was always mad when Josh was right and she’d argued against him. He liked to gloat, and she had no desire to go back to Chicago and hear him snicker.

 Worse than that, she had an aching fear in her gut that she’d fly home, and he’d be gone. She didn’t know why, but she hadn’t been able to shake that he was planning to leave for months. It seemed only a matter of time. How could she tame Josh Hutcherson, activist and rebel and total playboy?

 Why hadn’t they managed to have a discussion about their relationship in the year they’d been living together? They’d never promised to be exclusive, never had the conversation, and Jen had a sinking feeling that he was just biding time until he went back to his former life—floating from place to place and woman to woman, following the fight for the causes he supported and relationships be damned. Andre and Jackson were his only close friends, and he hadn’t seen either of them in months either.

 Something wasn’t right, and she was terrified of eventually discovering what it was.

 She shook herself as her mind drifted to Josh for the hundredth time in fifteen minutes. The action behind her on the pier ramped up as the pre-pageant sessions dragged on. She’d interviewed dozens of protestors, asking them their views on the women’s movement and women’s liberation. Several members of the New York Radical Women were there leading the protests, and Jen thought she’d go insane if she heard the words “consciousness raising” again.

 Jen directed her attention to what she thought would provide the clearest portrayal of what the protestors were attempting to accomplish. She interviewed women carrying signs of females marked up as cuts of meat; she directed her crew to record the Freedom Trash Can as women threw in high heels and tweezers and bras and pantyhose; she heard the term bra burner and twirled to spot a fire until the woman she was interviewing explained that they’d decided not to set the trash can on fire because they feared the wooden boardwalk would go up in flames. Finally, she took copious notes during the pageant itself until protestors in the balcony unfurled a large banner and simultaneously set off a smoke bomb that drove everyone from the auditorium.

 In short, she realized later when she was back in her hotel room and reviewing her notes, she’d done everything she could possibly do to both keep her job and work against the establishment Josh seemed to want to insist she supported. If she was honest, her work that day was a giant middle finger to both her boss and her whatever-the-hell he was to her because Josh sure hadn’t promised her anything.

 She was fuming by the time she landed in Chicago the following evening, ready to return to her apartment and find him and his belongings missing. If she could stay mad until she found out for sure that he was gone, maybe she’d be able to survive the loss.

 When she walked in the door, she had a string of curse words waiting on the tip of her tongue to fall, to distract her from the pain she knew was coming.

 “Hey, doll.  I missed you.”

 Tears pricked her eyes, and she dropped her suitcase. She took three giant steps and threw herself into his arms. He tried to ask her what was wrong a million times, but she shut him up with her mouth every time.

 “Take me to bed,” she begged, and he obliged. She was well into her third orgasm before she believed he was really there. 

[gibsonmusicart]

The Real Reason Major Record Companies Suck

By Peter Spellman

An artist who signs a major-label recording contract today is probably taking the biggest risk of his or her career. With a mortality rate of 1 out of 10 failures, it's clearly a crapshoot whether a new major label artist will "make it" or not. The list of "where are they nows" over the last ten years runs into the thousands. This sucks! When we try and figure out why this mortality rate prevails, a number of familiar reasons present themselves: * The major labels are putting out TOO MANY RECORDS...True, but I believe this is merely a symptom of a bigger problem. * The major labels are SIGNING ARTISTS TOO INDISCRIMINATELY...Yes, but this too is symptomatic of something deeper. * The major labels are peopled with DYSFUNCTIONAL, TURF-PROTECTING CLIMBERS...True sometimes, but this too is merely a symptom. * The major labels aim for A LEAST-COMMON-DENOMINATOR MUSICAL "SOUND" that will appeal to the masses...Yes, but a symptom again. We can go on and on with possible reasons and never arrive at the REAL one. The real reason major record labels suck is that they are "divisions" within larger multi-national corporations that are obligated, BY THEIR VERY NATURE, to behave in a certain art-destroying way. Let me explain. There are certain obligatory rules by which all corporations must operate. These rules are assumed, accepted, rarely articulated and color everything a corporation does. Now don't get me wrong. There ARE music people within corporate record labels - people who are truly turned on by music creation, recording, and promotion. I know some of them. But when push comes to shove, all their actions must reflect the policies and procedures handed down from "corporate". Too much independence on their part and they will be handed a pink slip and shown the door. There are seven primary rules corporations (including music corporations) must obey, and each rule has a profound effect on how music and artists are treated, regarded and disposed of. Here they are: #1.THE PROFIT IMPERATIVE: Monetary profit is the ultimate measure of all corporate decisions. Shareholders "own" corporations and they expect the value of their shares to increase, not decrease. Forget the little old lady that owns a few shares of stock. Most shares are owned by tremendously wealthy and thus politically influential individuals and most importantly by other corporations, many of which are investment banks. All are itchy for quarterly, measurable profits. "EBIDTA" (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) controls everything. Senior corporate officers are notorious for wearing "ninety-day glasses". Three months ahead is as far as most CEOs can see. This myopia often infects the entire organization, as relentless pressure to perform over the short term radiates from the top. A factory may be closed rather than modernized and an artist dropped rather than developed because the tax write-off makes the next period look better. #2.THE GROWTH IMPERATIVE: This goes hand-in-hand with the profit imperative. Profit means growth, expansion of the talent pool, expansion of the master catalog. Corporations live or die by whether they can sustain growth. Music corporations must keep on signing new artists in order to use their vast infrastructures and justify their overhead expenses. Sometimes company growth doesn't happen fast enough to suit the ambitions, however, and sometimes it doesn't happen at all. What to do then? The power-hungry CEO's typical solution is to expand by acquiring another company. Growth by acquisition has been the modus operandi of the corporate music business since the 1970s. EMI is a case in point. By acquiring such hot labels as Virgin and Chrysalis and bringing its antiquated operations up to snuff, EMI for a while seemed headed to the top. But chairman Sir Colin Southgate also pressured his executives to maintain double-digit growth, first in good times, then in the face of a rapidly deteriorating market. They responded by pumping out quick-buck anthologies and slashing costs willy-nilly when they could have been building talent for the long haul. Managed for short-term results, EMI has literally consumed itself in pursuit of its numbers. The profit and growth imperatives are the most fundamental corporate drives; together they represent the corporation's instinct "to live." #3.COMPETITION AND AGGRESSION: Corporations place every person in management in fierce competition with each other. Anyone interested in a corporate career must hone his or her ability to seize the moment. This applies to gain an edge over another company or over a colleague within the company. All divisions of the record company are attempting to represent themselves as an indispensable component of the recording industry. The day-to-day work of dealing predominantly with one specific medium, whether the music, the image in the video, radio media, or the press, tends to result in different staff assessing the potential of artists in different ways and developing their own agendas and goals rather than working towards a shared overall vision. As a label employee, you are expected to be part of a "team," but you also must be ready to climb over your own colleagues when an opportunity presents itself. Turf battles and other "family dysfunctions" are "normal" elements in the corporate game. #4.AMORALITY: Not being human, corporations do not have altruistic goals. In fact, corporate executives praise "nonemotional" as a basis for "objective" decision-making. So decisions that may be antithetical to aesthetic goals or artistic integrity are made without misgivings. Corporations, however, seek to hide their amorality and attempt to act as if they were altruistic. Lately, for example, there has been a concerted effort by the American industry to appear concerned with environmental cleanup, community arts or drug programs. Similarly, major labels are starting to once again toss around the phrase "long-term artist development" as an antidote to the perception they are short-sighted. But this can only be rhetorical in a corporate setting where quarterly results rule the environment. Product (and its creators) not bringing in the necessary numbers will continue to be dropped like a bad habit. Don't be deceived! It is a fair rule of thumb that corporations tend to advertise the very qualities they do not have in order to allay negative public perceptions. When corporations say "we care," it is almost always in response to the widespread perception that they do not have feelings or morals. #5.HIERARCHY: Corporate laws require that corporations be structured into classes of superiors and subordinates within a centralized pyramidal structure: chairman, directors, chief executive officer, VPs, division managers, and so on (based primarily on military models). Unlike the freedoms of an entrepreneurial business, large company decision-making must pass through layer upon layer of management. This makes the process of product development slow and ponderous. For example, from the time a band is signed, it can be a full year or longer before their first record is finally released owing in part to this dense hierarchical management structure. A lot can change in a year. Furthermore, high executive turnover and frequent management "purges" at large record companies can often delay or even derail a recording project indefinitely, leaving artists in the lurch. #6.QUANTIFICATION: Corporations require that subjective information be translated into objective form, i.e. numbers. The subjective or spiritual aspects of music, for example, cannot be translated, and so do not enter corporate equations. Music is evaluated only as a "product." Some in the industry would prefer to treat music like other industries treat cars and refrigerators. But music cannot be treated as such. As the creative extensions of the human spirit, music will always defy attempts at control. Indeed, just when the majors catch up with a "new" music trend they often find that the market has shifted and music lovers have moved on to something else. #7.HOMOGENIZATION: Corporations have a stake in all of us living our lives in a similar manner. The ultimate goal of corporate multinationals was expressed in a chilling statement by the president of Nabisco Corporation: "One world of homogeneous consumption. . . [I am] looking forward to the day when Arabs and Americans, Latinos and Scandinavians, will be munching Ritz crackers as enthusiastically as they already drink Coke or brush their teeth with Colgate." Corporations are structured and optimized for the "mass market" and so what they sell must appeal to the broadest audience possible. Their musical mainstay has been CHR (Contemporary Hit Radio or Top 40 Pop) - predictable, non-adventurous, formulaic. They have dominated the airwaves and circled the globe with this musical pablum. Incidentally, homogenization is one of the reasons the corporate music business (along with most other corporations) is in such a crisis today. It is facing a rapidly segmenting marketplace where consumers have become unpredictable. It always depended on "The Next Big Thing" to flush its corporate ledgers. But the very concept of one artist who can unite a large pop audience and help shape and define it (ala Elvis, The Beatles, Springsteen) seems about as dead as the 45-rpm spindle. Next Big Thing? More like "Next Modest Thing That Might Appeal to a Portion of the Demographic". But while bad news for the corporate giants, this is good news for their indie counterparts. A number of indie labels specializing in "niche" music markets (hip hop, ambient, folk, Celtic, etc.) are grabbing market share almost daily and breaking open a lot of champagne these days. So in conclusion, let us remember that the Musical Industrial Complex must, by necessity, bow to corporate imperatives that will inevitably clash with art. It's nobody's fault; it's the nature of corporate cultures, and any artist desiring to get into bed with this culture should proceed with eyes wide open. Your partner could be your nemesis.

Source: Music-Articles.com

[kontextmaschine]

Roseburg

Okay, Roseburg. It’s the capital of the southern Oregon timber industry, which fell hard with the end of harvesting on federal lands in the early ‘90s.

It’s got a population of 20,000, in a town center at a bend in the river and several residential neighborhoods, with more modern retail north of the city center around I-5. Several thousand more live in outlying areas, and Roseburg is seat of Douglas County stretching to the coast counting 110,000 population in total.

The airport offers no scheduled passenger service. Flights to major mountain west cities are available 83 miles to the north or 90 to the south; equivalent service is available 15 miles from Bend.

The only college in the area is a community college.

The town center, oriented around a “couplet” (parallel one-way streets) for a Main Street in Oregon tradition, has government buildings and a roughly five square block downtown. The downtown is early-20th century in character, solid frontages of storefronts with 1-2 stories of residential above, with churches, banks, and apartment buildings on the periphery.

The downtown is not pedestrianized, but has been designed for cars to park on the periphery. One block of storefronts is block-through, with entrances on each of two opposing sides. Many storefronts are empty. Several bars and restaurants are active, with a few (plus a co-working space) that look to have opened recently. Other stores remain looking a little out-of-time, and several storefronts have been occupied by nonprofits, street-level offices, or enterprises that look to create low returns while occupying high spatial volume. A gym occupies one sizeable space, two large markets stand empty. Despite this emptiness, only the markets look truly dilapidated; others have intact windows and clean interiors and reasonably fresh paint and facades. Scattered throughout are several civic monuments and monumental-looking fraternal lodges.

Sloping away from this downtown, the town center contains more stores, warehouses, restaurants, and bars. On the I-5 corridor, several hotels and travel-oriented businesses serve the freeway, mostly north of the town center.

- - -

So, in some ways this is kind of what I’d been expecting to like - a resource extraction town for a collapsed industry, leaving a fully built-out but intact infrastructure ripe for use. With poor flight connections to finance centers and a local economy still tapering off as the legacy population drifts away, an obvious hope is to market the small-town experience to internet workers or others who generate resources in a way that doesn’t require an existing resource base in physical proximity, while in the interim, the courthouse, the remaining private-lands timber industry, and the highway services support a basic level of services.

The maintained facades, the nonprofit offices occupying storefronts, and the general effort to keep downtown looking active suggest a level of coordination by local elites in support of the city’s viability.

- - -

And it’s… Cascadia. It’s green but at the same time younger than the east coast or rust belt - the wilderness hasn’t been carved into as much, the people not guarded, exhibit the good down-home parts of “country” without much “narrow-minded bumpkin”.

Many stores and bars have signs at the doors saying to take hoodies off, no backpacks, no tweekers, this site recorded on camera. There are at many points one to three people who are obviously homeless or on drugs in view. A Greyhound bus stopped in front of one dilapidated market and disgorged 7 vagrant-looking people. Every day the city police log lists like 6 arrests. On sites where these mugshots are compiled and shared around you see these are usually about heroin, meth, thefts to buy heroin or meth, or parole violations by people with convictions about heroin or meth. Even among apparently functional people working behind counters and bars, there are more facial scabs than you expect.

There is, frankly, an absurd level of pro-military sentiment. Signs in all sorts of windows, military discounts everywhere, banners from some past event benefiting some charity for military families. A veteranarian’s office is painted with the American flag, silhouettes of dogs and soldiers saluting or wearing helmets. I wondered if there had been a military base closed nearby because even after a week traveling through much more “red”-than-Portland country I had seen more of that stuff but nothing near that level. I never saw any murdered-out trucks or Punisher skulls or Black Rifle Coffee or 5.11 or any other military-adjacent aesthetic, though. Wearing Chinese-replica BDU pants, I was sporting more of a tactical look than anyone I saw.

Douglas County gave 64% of its vote to Trump in 2016.

- - -

The clear signs of people coming together to keep downtown appealing, all the monuments, the particular aesthetic of the places catering to a downtown crowd (and of that crowd itself), the legacy of what you’d expect from timber barons and their clerks… I was like “oh I get this, there’s a strong country-club Republican strain.”

Knowing that the region’s forest workers were pretty radical (that’s an important thing about Oregon, its normative rural experience isn’t of yeoman farmers but forest workers) I was wondering when I was going to get a sign of that, eventually I realized the yay-military stuff was the expression of class solidarity I was looking for.

Knowing both of those I turned to the addicts and fuckups and was like “ohh, you’re the third player in this drama, the unvirtuous poor that the virtuous poor and white collar types can bond over identifying against”.

A good deal of the nonprofits taking up space downtown seem to be the prison-industrial-complex type, the therapy or treatment you get sentenced to, designed to employ the first group turning the third into the second.

- - -

Seeing Roseburg makes some things about Portland make sense. That, say, when timber collapsed some of the “worker” types or their kids moved to, or stayed in Portland and brought the ethic to food service.

Traditional Oregon is weirdly exclusive, had an anti-Californian sentiment in particular but I’ve heard stores from Washingtonians about getting their cars pelted with rocks in the 80s, the state’s most famous statement of boosterism included a direct request not to move here.

There’s very much a sense that Portland has become swollen with non-Oregonians who seek to impose themselves on traditional, rural, Oregon, I could see a distaste towards any idea of making Roseburg more Portlandish.  

When I walked in to look at the co-working space (it’s really just a period office building with individual offices) I overheard a guy saying that he could accept if they just made up a list of the guns it was okay to buy…

And the thing about a strong local elite invested in the future of your town is the town is under the control of a strong local elite with an interest in its future, presumably wanting to keep or develop it as its own playground.

At the same time, whoever owns all those buildings would very much like to see them filled at competitive rates  I’m sure, and property owners are the backbone of any local elite. (I do not know the in-town landholders’ relationship to the woodland barons.)

- - -

So. Promising. It’s a charming Portland-in-miniature, houses are still available in the $100s and apartments at $500/br/mo. Between empty and underused space there’s maybe 10 years of solid expansion before all the slack has been taken up, and by all appearances the local system would love to see it happen and has no better pitch than quality-of-life-experience, being what Portland was in the 90s.

(Even the class system isn’t terribly off, a lot of the “Portlandia” years were about importing a middle class to fit between the old money in the West Hills and the retreating border of “Felony Flats” across the river to the east.)

That said it’s not abandoned just waiting for my guiding hand, there are preexisting power structures and culture to accommodate or challenge. And if undermining the local culture is the last thing I want - it’s what appeals to me, and the loss of which I’m mourning in Portland – I’m already thinking “okay that’s honestly too Republican, but that’s the only way to end up with a tolerable culture after it floods with creatives so hey”.

This is assuming it does take off, which I honestly think is a good assumption, as the big west coast cities fill up and cascade down (in the interim, look at Olympia, Visalia, Sacramento, Eugene, and Fresno) but isn’t inevitable. Oregon environmental laws and declining influence of Republican state legislators could further undermine the rural economy. Things could just keep declining past the point of being able to keep up appearances - the VA hospital just closed its emergency room, and there are two more in the area but the reasoning was the difficulty of recruiting and maintaining specialized staff, and that’s a bad sign.

Maybe I’m just psyched to see an authentically Cascadian town again and I should check out some others before getting swept away, in Oregon alone I’m still virgin on Albany, McMinnville, Forest Grove, and Coos Bay.

Still, I dunno. Might be a site for a good life.

[bountyofbeads]

How Not to Plot Secret Foreign Policy: On a Cellphone and WhatsApp https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/us/politics/giuliani-cellphone-hacking-russia-ukraine.html

How Not to Plot Secret Foreign Policy: On a Cellphone and WhatsApp

American officials expressed wonderment that Rudolph W. Giuliani was running his “irregular channel” of diplomacy over open cell lines and communications apps penetrated by the Russians.

By David E. Sanger | Published Nov. 18, 2019 | New York Times | Posted November 19, 2019 |

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor at the center of the impeachment investigation into the conduct of Ukraine policy, makes a living selling cybersecurity advice through his companies. President Trump even named him the administration’s first informal “cybersecurity adviser.”

But inside the National Security Council, officials expressed wonderment that Mr. Giuliani was running his “irregular channel” of Ukraine diplomacy over open cell lines and communications apps in Ukraine that the Russians have deeply penetrated.

In his testimony to the House impeachment inquiry, Tim Morrison, who is leaving as the National Security Council’s head of Europe and Russia, recalled expressing astonishment to William B. Taylor Jr., who was sitting in as the chief American diplomat in Ukraine, that the leaders of the “irregular channel” seemed to have little concern about revealing their conversations to Moscow.

“He and I discussed a lack of, shall we say, OPSEC, that much of Rudy’s discussions were happening over an unclassified cellphone or, perhaps as bad, WhatsApp messages, and therefore you can only imagine who else knew about them,” Mr. Morrison testified. OPSEC is the government’s shorthand for operational security.

He added: “I remember being focused on the fact that there were text messages, the fact that Rudy was having all of these phone calls over unclassified media,” he added. “And I found that to be highly problematic and indicative of someone who didn’t really understand how national security processes are run.”

WhatsApp notes that its traffic is encrypted, meaning that even if it is intercepted in transit, it is of little use — which is why intelligence agencies, including the Russians, are working diligently to get inside phones to read the messages after they are deciphered.

But far less challenging is figuring out the message of Mr. Giuliani’s partner, Gordon D. Sondland, the American ambassador to the European Union, who held an open cellphone conversation with Mr. Trump from a restaurant in Ukraine, apparently loud enough for his table mates to overhear. And Mr. Trump’s own cellphone use has led American intelligence officials to conclude that the Chinese — with whom he is negotiating a huge trade deal, among other sensitive topics — are doubtless privy to the president’s conversations.

But Ukraine is a particularly acute case. It is the country where the Russians have so deeply compromised the communications network that in 2014 they posted on the internet conversations between a top Obama administration diplomat, Victoria Nuland, and the United States ambassador to Ukraine at the time, Geoffrey R. Pyatt. Their intent was to portray the Americans — not entirely inaccurately — as trying to manage the ouster of a corrupt, pro-Russian president of Ukraine.

The incident made Ms. Nuland, who left the State Department soon after Mr. Trump’s election, “Patient Zero” in the Russian information-warfare campaign against the United States, before Moscow’s interference in the American presidential election.

But it also served as a warning that if you go to Ukraine, stay off communications networks that Moscow wired.

That advice would seem to apply especially to Mr. Giuliani, who speaks around the world on cybersecurity issues. Ukraine was the petri dish for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the place where he practiced the art of trying to change vote counts, initiating information warfare and, in two celebrated incidents, turning out the lights in parts of the country.

Mr. Giuliani, impeachment investigators were told, was Mr. Trump’s interlocutor with the new Ukrainian government about opening investigations into the president’s political opponents. The simultaneous suspension of $391 million in military aid to Ukraine, which some have testified was on Mr. Trump’s orders, fulfilled Moscow’s deepest wish at a moment of ground war in eastern Ukraine, and a daily, grinding cyberwar in the capital.

It remains unknown why the Russians have not made any of these conversations public, assuming they possess them. But inside the intelligence agencies, the motives of Russian intelligence officers is a subject of heated speculation.

A former senior American intelligence official speculated that one explanation is that Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Sondland were essentially doing the Russians’ work for them. Holding up military aid — for whatever reason — assists the Russian “gray war” in eastern Ukraine and sows doubts in Kyiv, also known as Kiev in the Russian transliteration, that the United States is wholly supportive of Ukraine, a fear that many State Department and National Security Council officials have expressed in testimony.

But Mr. Giuliani also was stoking an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that Mr. Putin has engaged in, suggesting that someone besides Russia — in this telling, Ukrainian hackers who now supposedly possess a server that once belonged to the Democratic National Committee — was responsible for the hacking that ran from 2015 to 2016.

Mr. Trump raised this possibility in his July 25 phone call with the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. It was not the first time he had cast doubt on Russia’s involvement: In a call to a New York Times reporter moments after meeting Mr. Putin for the first time in Hamburg, Germany, in 2017, Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Putin’s view that Russia is so good at cyberoperations that it would have never been caught. “That makes sense, doesn’t it?” he asked.

He expressed doubts again in 2018, in a news conference with Mr. Putin in Helsinki, Finland. That was only days after the Justice Department indicted a dozen Russian intelligence officers for their role in the hack; the administration will not say if it now believes that indictment was flawed because there is evidence that Ukranians were responsible.

Whether or not he believes Ukraine was involved, Mr. Giuliani certainly understood the risks of talking on open lines, particularly in a country with an active cyberwar. As a former prosecutor, he knows what the United States and its adversaries can intercept. In more recent years, he has spoken around the world on cybersecurity challenges. And as the president’s lawyer, he was a clear target.

Mr. Giuliani said in a phone interview Monday that nothing he talked about on the phone or in texts was classified. “All of my conversations, I can say uniformly, were on an unclassified basis,” he said.

His findings about what happened in Ukraine were “generated from my own investigations” and had nothing to do with the United States government, he said, until he was asked to talk with Kurt D. Volker, then the special envoy for Ukraine, in a conversation that is now part of the impeachment investigation. Mr. Volker will testify in public on Tuesday.

Mr. Giuliani said that he never “conducted a shadow foreign policy, I conducted a defense of my client,” Mr. Trump. “The State Department apparatchiks are all upset that I intervened at all,” he said, adding that he was the victim of “wild accusations.”

Mr. Sondland is almost as complex a case. While he is new to diplomacy, he is the owner of a boutique set of hotels and certainly is not unaware of cybersecurity threats, since the hotel industry is a major target, as Marriott learned a year ago.

But Mr. Sondland held a conversation with Mr. Trump last summer in a busy restaurant in Kyiv, surrounded by other American officials. Testimony indicates Mr. Trump’s voice was loud enough for others at the table to hear.

But in testimony released Monday night, David Holmes, a veteran Foreign Service officer who is posted to the American Embassy in Kyiv, and who witnessed the phone call between the president and Mr. Sondland, suggested that the Russians heard it even if they were not out on the town that night.

Asked if there was a risk of the Russians listening in, Mr. Holmes said, “I believe at least two of the three, if not all three of the mobile networks are owned by Russian companies, or have significant stakes in those.

“We generally assume that mobile communications in Ukraine are being monitored,” he said.

🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕

Republicans Are Following Trump to Nowhere

There’s an impeachment lesson hiding in the president’s failure to produce the political results he wants.

By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist |

Published Nov. 19, 2019, 6:00 AM ET | New York Times | Posted Nov 19, 2019

Americans have gone to the polls four times this month to vote in major, statewide races. In Virginia, they voted for control of the state Legislature; in Mississippi, Kentucky and Louisiana, they voted for control of the governor’s mansion. In each case, President Trump tied himself to the outcome.

“Governor @MattBevin has done a wonderful job for the people of Kentucky!” Trump tweeted before Election Day. “Matt has my Complete and Total Endorsement, and always has. GET OUT and VOTE on November 5th for your GREAT Governor, @MattBevin!”

Trump sent a similar message ahead of the Virginia elections. “Virginia, with all of the massive amount of defense and other work I brought to you, and with everything planned, go out and vote Republican today,” he said.

“The people of this country aren’t buying” impeachment, Trump said at a rally in Louisiana last week. “You see it because we’re going up and they’re going down.”

“You gotta give me a big win please,” he said later. “Please.”

Trump thought voters would repudiate impeachment and vindicate him. Instead, they did the opposite. Virginia Democrats won a legislative majority for the first time since 1993, flipping historically Republican districts. Kentucky Democrats beat incumbent Gov. Matt Bevin in a state Trump won by 30 points in 2016. And Louisiana Democrats re-elected Governor John Bel Edwards in a state Trump won by the more modest but still substantial margin of 20 points. Democrats in Mississippi made significant gains even as they fell short of victory — their nominee for governor, Jim Hood, lost by five-and-a-half points, a dramatic turnaround from four years ago, when Republican Phil Bryant won in a landslide.

It’s true that Democrats didn’t run on the issue of impeachment. These races were centered on more quotidian issues like health care, transportation and education. If anything, this was the second consecutive election cycle where health care made the difference. In Kentucky, the Democratic candidate, Andy Beshear — whose father, also as governor, implemented the Affordable Care Act in the state — promised to protect Medicaid and hammered Bevin on his plan for work requirements. Edwards ran for re-election on his implementation of the Medicaid expansion in Louisiana, which gave coverage to more than 400,000 state residents. Medicaid was a key issue in the Mississippi race as well, where an estimated 100,000 residents would be eligible for coverage under the expansion.

But just because no one ran on impeachment doesn’t mean it wasn’t in the air. Voters could have shown they were tired of Democratic investigations. They could have elevated the president’s allies. Instead, voters handed Trump an unambiguous defeat. And that is much more than just a blow to the president’s immediate political fortunes.

To start, it confirms recent polling on impeachment. A new ABC News poll shows majority support for impeachment and even removal. Fifty-one percent say that “President Trump’s actions were wrong and he should be impeached by the House and removed from office by the Senate.” And an overwhelming 70 percent of Americans say that the inciting offense — Trump’s attempt to coerce Ukraine into investigating a political rival — was wrong. A similarly fresh Reuters poll has lower numbers for removal (44 percent of Americans say they want the House to impeach and the Senate to convict), but also shows that most Americans want Congress to investigate Trump if he “committed impeachable offenses during his conversation with the president of Ukraine.”

Worried about backlash and committed to restraint, House Democrats have limited their impeachment inquiry to the Ukraine scandal. You could read these numbers and election results as vindication — proof that Democrats were right to take a narrow, focused approach to the president’s wrongdoing.

But it’s also possible that Democrats are leaving political advantage on the table — that there’s still opportunity for an even broader investigation that tackles everything from White House involvement in Ukraine and the president’s phone calls with other foreign leaders (the records of several of these, not just the one involving Ukraine, have been inappropriately placed on a classified server) to his deals with authoritarian governments in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. These wouldn’t be fishing expeditions — given the president’s refusal to divest from his businesses or separate his personal interests from those of the state, there’s good reason to suspect inappropriate behavior across a range of areas — but they would mean a longer process. Democrats couldn’t wrap up impeachment before the end of the year. They would have to let it move at its own pace, even if it stretches well into 2020. (Watergate, remember, took more than two years to unfold.)

I don’t see the downside. A long inquiry keeps impeachment out of Mitch McConnell’s hands until there’s a comprehensive case against the president. Yes, there’s the chance of a late campaign acquittal, but if the past month is any prediction, Trump will have sustained a large amount of political damage over the course of a long investigation. It would keep him off-balance, especially if further investigation uncovers even more corruption. It would also allow the six Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate to campaign through the primary season instead of returning to Washington for a trial. But most important it would show a commitment to getting to the full truth of what’s been happening in the White House under the guise of making America great again.

🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕

[mattkennard]

The War on Hope: How the US tried to stop Evo Morales

In the middle of the night on April 16, 2009, an elite Bolivian police unit entered the four-star Hotel Las Americas situated in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, a hotbed of opposition to the President Evo Morales’s government. Flown in from the capital, La Paz, the commandos planned to raid a group of men staying in the upscale lodgings. What happened in the early hours of that morning is still disputed, but at the end of the operation, three men who were asleep in bed had been killed in cold blood. Some say they were executed, while the Bolivian government claims its officers won out in a 20-minute firefight. In the aftermath, the story gained international attention when it was revealed that two of the dead were not even Bolivian. One was Michael Dwyer, a 26-year-old Irishman from County Cork, where he had been a bouncer and security guard before moving to Santa Cruz just six months earlier. Another, Árpád Magyarosi, was Hungarian-Romanian, and had been a teacher and musician before relocating to Bolivia at the same time. The third person killed in the operation was the ringleader of the group, Eduardo Rózsa-Flores, an eccentric Bolivian-Hungarian who had been born in Santa Cruz before fleeing the country during the US-backed dictatorship of Hugo Banzer in the 1970s. His family moved to Chile before the ascent of another US-backed dictator in that country, General Augusto Pinochet, and resettled finally in Hungary. Rózsa was a supporter of Opus Dei, the right-wing Catholic sect, and fought in the Croatian independence war in the early 1990s, founding the paramilitary International Platoon that many believed was aligned with fascistic elements. Two journalists, including a British photographer, died in suspicious circumstances while investigating the platoon. In Santa Cruz on that night, two others, Mario Tadic, a Croatian, and Elöd Tóásó, also from Hungary, were arrested and remain in a high- security La Paz prison to this day. Two more suspects, both with Eastern European connections, were not at the scene and are still missing.

It transpired that the government had acted on intelligence indicating that these men comprised a cell of terrorists who were planning a program of war and violence in the country, which included a somewhat bizarre plan to blow up Evo Morales, the president, and his cabinet on Lake Titicaca, the biggest lake in the Andes and a major tourist attraction. The intelligence services, after a tip-off from an informer close to the group, had been following them for a number of months. They decided to act soon after a bomb exploded at the house of the Archbishop of Santa Cruz, Cardinal Julio Terrazas. The government appointed a seven-person committee to investigate the plot, headed by César Navarro, deputy minister for coordination with social movements and civil society, which spent the next five months until November 2009 looking into it. Among the items seized during the raid was Rózsa’s laptop in which investigators claim to have discovered emails between ex-CIA asset and Cold War double-agent István Belovai. “There are emails between Rózsa and Belovai, he was the brains behind it,” Mr Navarro told me in his office in the presidential palace in La Paz. “He would ask them logistical questions about escape routes, about whether the government or police would be able to get to them.” Belovai, who died in 2010, was a spook who called himself “Hungary’s first NATO soldier”. Rózsa is thought to have become friends with Belovai in the 1990s during the Balkan war.

At the time of the attacks, the attitude of the US embassy, revealed through the cables sent from La Paz to Washington, was one of incredulity at the government’s claims and worry about persecution of the opposition. One comment was headlined ‘“Terrorism” excuse for mass arrests?” The US embassy was concerned about “raising fears of possible arrests of members of the Santa Cruz-based political opposition”. Another cable did admit that in “an interview released posthumously, the group’s leader [Rózsa] advocated the secession of Santa Cruz department, Bolivia’s largest and most prosperous state”. The reaction from the opposition was no less sympathetic. The right-wing governor of Santa Cruz, Rubén Costas, accused the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) government of “mounting a show” in the aftermath. The photos released by the government afterward told a different story. Rózsa and Dwyer can be seen posing with large caches of heavy weaponry including pistols and sub-machine guns, and a large rifle with telescopic sights. President Morales said the cell was planning to “riddle us with bullets”. A US embassy official met with a public defender assigned to alleged terrorist Tadic. She told the official that “the Santa Cruz leaders named by the government are most likely linked with the group” – these leaders were in fact intimately involved with the US embassy. Tadic, she said, had been stockpiling weapons and carrying out military training on rural properties outside Santa Cruz. She confirmed they were responsible for placing the explosive device in front of the cardinal’s house, while Tadic had testified that the next target was going to be Prefect Rubén Costas’ residence, and that Rózsa had advised Costas to strengthen his security gate to minimize the damage. The intent in targeting the cardinal and the prefect was to make it look like MAS supporters were carrying out the attacks.

The fact that the alleged terrorists were staying in a four-star hotel with no discernible day job suggested they must have had money coming from somewhere. The pictures of these foreigners partying in Santa Cruz – subsequently released – also show they were accepted and welcomed openly by some powerbrokers in the city – it seemed to go all the way to the top, even the prefect of the department. But none came more powerful than Branko Marinkovic, a local oligarch of Croatian origin, who had been a long-time friend of the US embassy and is now in exile in the US after being identified as one of those “most likely” to have been involved with the terrorist group. Juan Kudelka, Marinkovic’s right-hand man, said in March 2010 that he had been asked by Marinkovic to pass envelopes of money to Rózsa as part of the plan to support this terrorist group, called, he said, “La Torre”. Another suspect, Hugo Achá Melgar, a keen friend of a strange human rights group in New York, also soon fled to the US, where he was also welcomed with open arms. “[T]here are several factors that could induce the [government of Bolivia] to connect us to suspected extremist groups in Santa Cruz,” noted one US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks. “The petition of political asylum from alleged terrorist Hugo Acha and his wife, allocation of USAID assistance to a Bolivian organization suspected of funding a terrorist cell in Santa Cruz, and an implied [US Government] role based on the [Government of Bolivia’s] assertion that the Santa Cruz cell leader organized meetings and had contacts in Washington.” All of these assertions turned out to be true; in fact, the situation was worse than that. The US planned to bring the opposition from all over the country together in a supra-departmental business lobby in an effort to rid Bolivia of its socialist government.

At the time, the US embassy “reassured” Vice President Álvaro García Linera “that there was no US government involvement”, and President Obama vouched for that too when asked by President Morales soon after. But Mr Navarro, the investigator, still didn’t believe it. “The US didn’t not know,” he told me. When I brought Vice President Linera into the Financial Times office in London to speak to the union at the paper, he told me: “Nothing like this happens in Bolivia without the US knowing something about it.” Even if we assume the US embassy didn’t know of the cell, why would the US then provide a sanctuary to alleged funders of “terrorists” whose own public defender was telling the embassy that they were “most likely” guilty? The answer is long and complex and reveals the lengths to which the US has gone to undermine the democratically elected government of Evo Morales since it came to power in 2005.

Turning the tide

The raid and the deaths came at a pivotal moment in Bolivian history. At that time the poorest country in South America, it also had the highest proportion of indigenous people in the continent – 60 percent. In December 2005, there was a tectonic shift in the power structure of the nation, unheard of since independence from Spain, when the country elected its first ever indigenous president, the socialist trade union leader Evo Morales. It wasn’t a sudden development but followed decades of confrontation and public protests that had escalated in the previous five years. In 2000, the so-called “Water Wars”, centered in the city of Cochabamba in the middle of the country, had pitched the local communities en masse against the government and the World Bank which had overseen the privatization of the water industry and resultant soaring prices. Police had been instructed to arrest people collecting rainwater to avoid the new prices they could not afford. Over the next years, the indigenous movement, which is based around small micro-democratic communities, grew stronger. In 2003, mass protests spread and thousands of demonstrators went on to blockade La Paz before troops, allegedly under orders of the government, shot dead a score of protesters.

The presidential incumbent, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, more commonly known as Goni, was forced out and fled to Miami, where he lives to this day. It was in this ferment that Morales, a former cocalero (coca picker) turned trade union leader, and his party, MAS, came to power with a huge take of the popular vote. This turn of events, however, was not greeted kindly by the traditional elites in Bolivia and their international backers. The US had been sending its own political “experts” for years to try to avoid exactly this scenario: a 2005 documentary, Our Brand is Crisis, shows a team of slick campaign managers from Greenberg Carville Shrum, the political consultancy, successfully running Goni’s campaign as he defeated Evo Morales in the 2002 presidential elections. This time it was different: the US was powerless to stop Morales, causing serious worry among planners. Bolivia remains one of the most unequal societies in the western hemisphere, but the established state of affairs had made some people very rich. As the New York Times put it when describing Santa Cruz: “Scenes of extreme poverty stand in contrast here with the construction of garish new headquarters of corporations from Brazil, Europe and the United States.” On top of this, the land distribution has led some analysts to describe the set-up as akin to “semi-feudal provinces dominated by semi-feudal estates”. Five percent of the landowners control over 90 percent of the arable land. When MAS came to power it sought to deal with this egregious inequality, which is marked pretty consistently along race lines, with the poor landless peasants largely comprising the indigenous population. As always, the US supported the oligarchy, which in turn supported the continued slavery of the country to US corporations.

A land reform program was started by Morales to break up the huge rural estates that had long been controlled by a small elite and to redistribute land that was fallow to landless indigenous peasants. The government stipulated that private ownership of huge estates would only be acceptable if put to “social use”. But a plan like that was going to engender vociferous opposition from an entrenched elite that felt it was being usurped. One particularly illustrative case is that of Ronald Larsen, a 67-year-old American from Montana, who came to Bolivia in 1968 and who, by the time President Morales came to power, owned 17 properties throughout Bolivia (along with his sons), comprising 141,000 acres, or three times the size of the country’s biggest city. The new Bolivian government accused Mr Larsen of keeping indigenous Guarani farmers as “virtual slaves”, and tried to deliver seeds to them to help them escape from servitude. Mr Larsen responded: “These people, their main thing in life is where they’re going to get their next bowl of rice. A few bags of rice buys a lot of support.”1 The government reported that it was fired on as it tried to deliver the said rice.

The reaction to land reform from the east of the country, where the majority of natural resources and wealth is located, was near hysterical. A class of magnates – most of European descent – own many of the businesses there and, over the next three years, with their allies in the media luna (the crescent-shaped “opposition” area of the country) worked to bring down the new President Morales. The US government and its agencies, which had for decades exercised overwhelming economic and political power over Bolivia in tandem with these newly displaced elites, was not a benign player in this period. It actively worked to help the opposition and undermine the democratically elected government. The spider web of US control was, and is, extensive, with many US agencies created at the height of the Cold War still in place, civilized language hiding their use, first, as a tool against Soviet influence in the region, and now to undermine the democratic socialism of MAS. Despite vast natural gas reserves, these agencies, alongside transnational corporations and their local compradors in government, have conspired to keep Bolivia the second-poorest country, and among the most unequal, in South America.

When the MAS government threatened to upend that social order, it was logical that the US would be nervous. One of President Morales’ first acts in power was to shutter the CIA office that had until then, he said, been operating in the presidential palace. Morales’ claims that the various agencies that make up the US foreign policy apparatus have been giving covert support to the opposition are dismissed by the US government as “conspiracy theories”. Alongside the US government, a score of non-governmental institutions, some headquartered in New York, or US-ally Colombia, have been working to undermine the democratic government in Bolivia and continue to this day.

Paying clandestine visits

When I interviewed César Navarro, who headed the investigation of the April 2009 incident, in his office lined with pictures of Che Guevara and prominent members of Bolivian civil society, he spoke at 100 miles an hour, desperate to get all the information out as quickly as possible. “Rózsa didn’t come here by himself, they brought him,” he told me. “Hugo Achá Melgar brought him.” The prosecutor in the case had charged that one of Achá’s business cards was found in the backpack of one of the alleged terrorists. Further, it was claimed that Achá met with Rózsa on at least three occasions, while testimony from other terrorist suspects in custody implicated Achá as a financial supporter of the group. The Bolivian government has tried to request the extradition of Achá, who is currently in the United States, to no avail.

Achá’s story reveals a long trail that leads all the way to a set of plush offices in the midtown area of Manhattan. The husband of a prominent opposition congresswoman, Achá was the founder and head of a Bolivian version of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), an American non- governmental organization (NGO) based in New York. Not very well known – but boasting Elie Wiesel and Václav Havel on its “international council” – the HRF was founded in 2005 by a character atypical of the NGO and human rights world. A rich playboy-cum-political talking head, Thor Halvorssen could be spotted on the Manhattan party scene, as well as giving his two-pennies-worth on Fox News.

His foundation is not typical either – Mr Halvorssen told The Economist in 2010 that he wanted his organization to break from the traditional NGO mold. First his group had an overt agenda, the magazine said, focusing “mainly on the sins of leftist regimes in Latin America”. But his tactics were different, too. “With the confidence of a new kid on the block,” the article continued, “he argues that the big players in human rights have become too bureaucratic, and disinclined to do bold things like pay clandestine visits to repressive countries.” From his midtown Manhattan office, Halvorssen said: “They work in these big marbled offices, where’s the heart in that?” It was in the dusty streets of La Paz that he wanted to be. In many ways, Halvorssen was merely a chip off the old block. HRF’s obsession with the “repressive” governments of, particularly, Venezuela and Bolivia was not something new to the family. Neither were clandestine activities. Halvorssen’s father, Thor Halvorssen Hellum, is a Venezuelan businessman, the head of one of the richest families in the country. In 1993, he was arrested and charged with homicide and other counts after a group of terrorists set off a series of six bombs around the capital, Caracas. It was named the “yuppie” terrorists plot because its planners were allegedly bankers and other gilded elite who hoped that the panic caused by the bombs would help them speculate on the stock market. The Houston Chronicle noted at the time: “Police have identified one alleged mastermind as Thor Halvorssen, a former president of telephone company CANTV, former presidentially-appointed anti-drug commissioner, and, according to officials, a former operative of the US Central Intelligence Agency in Central America.” Halvorssen Hellum eventually spent 74 days in prison before a superior court judge found him innocent of attempted homicide and all other charges related to the bombings. Many found the decision murky. And two hours after his release, another “human rights” NGO, the International Society for Human Rights, appointed him director of its Pan-American committee. During a CIA “anti- drug” campaign in Venezuela, which saw a ton of nearly pure cocaine shipped to the US in 1990, Mr Halvorssen Hellum, in his position as narcotics chief, was again in trouble. The New York Times reported that “[t]he DEA discovered that Halvorssen, who had his own links to the CIA, was using information from DEA cases to smear political and business rivals”.

Like father like son. Halvorssen Jnr’s own human rights project, the HRF, was set up, he said, to help in “defending human rights and promoting liberal democracy in the Americas”. HRF “will research and report on human rights abuses” and “produce memoranda, independent analyses, and policy reports”. But it is clear that the organization is set up, primarily, to malign the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia. It did have sizeable funds to carry out its tasks. The group’s financial accounts make interesting reading. In the year ending December 31, 2006, the first full year of operations, the group spent $300,518 on its programs. By the next year, ending 2007, this had more than doubled to $644,163. In 2008, this had gone down to $595,977, but it surged again in 2009 to $832,532, as political violence was reaching a head in Bolivia. Interestingly, in the year ended 2008, “general programs”, which was the highest spending category, was $85,525, or 14.4 percent of total spending on “program services”. By 2009, “general programs” spending was up 813 percent to $458,840, and comprised 55 percent of total spending. In the four years from 2006 to 2009, HRF has spent nearly $2.6 million on running costs. But where was the money going? We do know thanks to the WikiLeaks cables that when Branko Marinkovic, the oligarch, fled to the US from Bolivia, one of his first ports of calls was the HRF office in Manhattan. Unfortunately, we don’t know what they talked about. In its six years of operations, the group has released two 30-odd page annual reports, and 16 other reports on varying topics related to “repressive governments”. To be fair, the group did organize an Oslo human rights conference which, one Wall Street Journal journalist noted, was “unlike any human-rights conference I’ve ever attended”, because “there was no desire to blame … the US or other Western nations”.

In the same article, Mr Halvorssen laughed off claims that he, like his father, was in cahoots with the CIA, calling such claims “conspiracy theories”. But links between his group and Achá, the man accused of buying the tickets for the terrorists in Santa Cruz, were closer than he let on. Mr Halvorssen maintained that the Bolivian group was “inspired by HRF’s work” but is “a group of Bolivian individuals … a wholly independent group with a board of directors made up entirely of Bolivian nationals”. Really? Achá was briefing the US embassy on his problems all through the period and officers from the embassy met with him in “his capacity as head of Human Rights Foundation – Bolivia”, which the embassy was told was tightly linked to the New York-based organization. One cable notes that Achá’s outfit is “an affiliate of the larger Human Rights Foundation group” – the one headed by Mr Halvorssen.

The HRF group in New York naturally still denies any wrongdoing by Achá, and is, according to some, likely helping him in his efforts to remain in the US. Its spokesperson told the press that “Human Rights Foundation in Bolivia has carried out extraordinary work denouncing human rights abuses in that country, and unfortunately the response of Morales comes in the form of insults and unfounded accusations … We have carried out an internal review and have found no evidence that Mr. Acha is linked to the group that the government claims is carrying out separatist activities.” As WikiLeaks cables reveal, the group further accused President Morales of “vilifying the reputation” of HRF due to HRF–Bolivia’s reporting on the “destruction of democratic institutions, the grand human rights violations in Bolivia” and the “anti-democratic character of the Morales Administration”. It was a typical response. The Bolivian human rights ombudsman (Defensor del Pueblo) Waldo Albarracin, referring specifically to the Human Rights Foundation, told the US embassy: “they do not have the facts and so any opinion they have is just that, an opinion.”

Achá was at one point arrested on suspicion of being involved in the plot. The cables reveal the concern of the embassy over the arrest of this “Embassy contact and leader of a human rights NGO”. Achá had even given the embassy a copy of the warrant for his arrest, which he linked to his “investigations” into a massacre in the Pando department of Bolivia (carried out, in fact, by far-right elements of the opposition). But, like many of the opposition figures, he was successful in persuading the US to grant him political asylum. The cable ends by saying that “Acha is currently in the US”. Providing a sanctuary for Bolivian suspects would become a theme of US policy. In fact, the US had been active in his alleged terrorist education. According to the WikiLeaks cables, Achá had actually participated in a Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies “Terrorism and Counterinsurgency” course in Washington in late 2008 – one assumes to gain knowledge for his own violent “counter-insurgency” terrorism back in Bolivia. Included in the course’s mandatory reading were “Left Wing Terrorism in Italy” by Donatella della Porta and “Lenin on Armed Insurrection” by Tony Cliff.

Roger Pinto, a senator for the opposition party, Podemos, told the US embassy that the government “has evidence that Acha was involved with the alleged Santa Cruz cell”. He added that Achá was involved in trying to solicit funds for the group from opposition leaders in the media luna, the opposition stronghold, but only in order to “set up a self-defense force for the Media … not to assassinate the President”. Pinto contended that, among others, Achá had approached the mayor of the central city of Trinidad, Moises Shriqui, with Rózsa to enlist his support. Pinto said that Shriqui flatly refused to get involved and discounted the group as “a really bad idea”. Another opposition Podemos deputy, Claudio Banegas, told the US embassy that the congressional investigation into the Santa Cruz group had revealed that Achá did in fact have a relationship with the cell. His colleague said his involvement was “not at the top of the lighthouse, just at the bottom”. In another cable from La Paz, Achá is called a “human rights lawyer” and it is noted that political officers from the embassy met twice with him in Santa Cruz while he was investigating the September 2008 massacre of indigenous peasants in the Pando department of Bolivia. “He was preparing a report detailing a high degree of Morales administration involvement to provoke violence in Pando,” the cable added. Halvorssen never mentioned whether this “wholly independent group” had received funding from the HRF for the task, but his own group came to similar politically motivated and erroneous conclusions about the Pando massacre. Incidentally, Thor Halvorssen contacted the Financial Times soon after I asked for an interview with a résumé of my apparent “radicalism” and precipitated my departure from the paper. These “believers in freedom”, as mentioned, only believe in freedom when it benefits them.

La España Gloriosa

Bolivian people, and particularly the business community in the country, have always had a strong disdain for a central government they see as interfering and stifling. To this purpose, in most areas of the country, there are institutions called civic committees, which organize and represent business interests. They have become especially important in the opposition stronghold of the media luna. In Santa Cruz, where the Rózsa group was foiled, the civic committee has become the major non-governmental voice of opposition to Evo Morales. Its presidency has been held by some of the most powerful businessmen and politicians in the country, including Rubén Costas, the current governor of Santa Cruz. Its funding comes from 220 businesses in the department. In its internal report on civil society in Bolivia (which I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) reported that the two main columns on either side of the state are “the civic committees […] on the right, and the large labor organizations on the left”. There have been accusations that the Santa Cruz civic committee (SCCC) has members with fascist leanings involved in violence against indigenous citizens, particularly in the affiliated youth branch. Ignacio Mendoza, a senator in Sucre, who is part of the left-wing opposition to MAS, told me: “Against us there is the Santa Cruz Civic Committee and the Youth Union, which is a neo-fascist group. These groups always threaten.” In the New York Times, correspondent Simon Romero noted: “It is no surprise that many Bolivian supporters of Mr. Morales view Santa Cruz as a redoubt of racism and elitism.” He added: “This city remains a bastion of openly xenophobic groups like the Bolivian Socialist Falange, whose hand-in-air salute draws inspiration from the fascist Falange of the late Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco.”

This would appear to include the SCCC. At the conclusion of a series of interviews at SCCC’s offices, the group’s spokesperson inexplicably allowed me to download a tranche of files from the computer in the main office. These included racist cartoons of Evo Morales, as well as a poem lauding the old colonial country, Spain.

One reads (my translation):

The grand Spain with benign fate. 

Here he planted the sign Of surrender.

And it did in its shadow An eminent people

Of clear front A loyal heart

There is also a letter titled Filial Espana (Spanish affiliate) sent by the president of the committee to the president of the far-right civic committee in Spain, Carlos Duran Banegas, thanking him for his support and help. Another folder includes a coat of arms for Germán Busch who was a president of Bolivia in the 1930s and was believed by many Bolivians to have Nazi tendencies. Reports by the fascist- linked grouping UnoAmerica also feature prominently on the SCCC computer. In fact, among the documents there are photos taken, one must assume, by an SCCC photographer of UnoAmerica delivering its report on Pando to the Organization of American States (OAS) in New York.

The computer files I retrieved were also full of unhinged documents calling Chávez and Morales terrorists. One reporter accurately noted that the SCCC is “a sparkplug of separatist agitation in the East”. Despite these leanings, the US taxpayer, through USAID, is funding members of this group. In the WikiLeaks cables, under the subtitle “Blowing Smoke”, an August 2007 dispatch makes fun of Bolivian government claims about USAID activities being used to help the opposition. But inadvertently this proved it. It noted: “[a]nother USAID contractor, Juan Carlos Urenda (a Santa Cruz civic leader) described the MAS accusations as an attempt to cast a smokescreen over the ‘serious problems in this country’.” A search in the trove of documents from the SCCC’s computer turns up the same Mr Urenda, USAID contractor, as the author for the SCCC of a long article lauding the history of the department’s autonomy struggle. A prominent lawyer in the east, in 1987 he published a book called Departmental Autonomies, which, he noted, “outlines what will be the fundamental doctrine of the process of autonomy”. He went on: “Conscious of the error of having structured the country in a centralized way, [Santa Cruz] has not ceased in its attempt to decentralize the state throughout its republican history.”

It turns out that Mr Urenda was actually one of the founders of the SCCC’s pre-autonomy council and one of the area’s most prominent ideologues. This finding makes a mockery of USAID’s claim to be apolitical. As its own report noted: “it is clear that Bolivian civil society in the first columns on both sides [civic committees and labor organizations] are playing roles that are less social and more political and governmental.” Although they shy away from talking about direct aid, the top brass of the SCCC were full of praise for USAID when I talked to them. Documents from the computer also show extensive preparations for the Ferexpo 2007, a business show in the city, which US ambassador Philip Goldberg would attend. “USAID in Bolivia was supporting democratic organizations and tourism and fairs,” said Ruben Dario Mendez, the spokesperson. “They were interested in fomenting political participation. Evo doesn’t like that, he doesn’t like there to be freedom.”

It’s not just USAID that helps out. Mr Mendez noted that the Journalists’ Association of Santa Cruz has an agreement with the US embassy that helps them print books and put on events, an agreement which is not in place in other parts of the country. “In some cases the US helps us,” he said. “Anyone can submit a proposal to get help. I have attended events about political governance, about freedom of expression, human rights,” he added. “There was a new penal prosecution code, and a workshop on that has been carried out by USAID for years.” He was still optimistic about the ability of USAID to go about its work: “There are still organizations and people in Santa Cruz who believe in democracy. This was proved the other day when I went to the opening of a center for the support of democracy, USAID helped fund this, they work with the university president, and the vice-president of the civic committee helped set this up.” He obviously thought that USAID believed in his type of democracy. “We have a totalitarian system here, if there was a democratic government there wouldn’t be a problem here. The biggest problem in Bolivia is centralism.” (A view echoed in USAID’s reports.) The extensive cache of reports from both organizations on the office computer also reveals the links between the SCCC and the NGOs HRF and UnoAmerica. These were evidently being sent out as primers on the situation in Bolivia.

I found more evidence of US support for these right-wing opposition forces in Sucre, the judicial capital of the country, where in August 2006 President Morales announced the opening of the constituent assembly. It would spend six months redrafting the constitution with enhanced rights for indigenous communities, more economic control of the country’s resources, as well as land reform. It was eventually passed by a referendum in 2009. “Sucre is like the dividing line between the east and the altiplano [poorer indigenous west] so the idea was it was a place that could bring peace between the two peoples,” Mr Mendoza, the left-wing senator, told me as we sat in the local government headquarters. “But radical groups here connected themselves with Santa Cruz and all of a sudden it became about something bigger.” The whole process was marred by violence, as the opposition set out to scupper the process. “It all comes down to racism,” he added. “The constituent assembly was largely made up of indigenous farmers and that prompted racism. People were saying, ‘Whoever doesn’t jump is a llama’, acting superior to indigenous people and calling them llamas because they are from the altiplano.”

As the killings and lootings got under way, the US made no statement of condemnation. “They are setting fire to gas pipelines, and the US government does not condemn that?” asked Morales at the time. “Of course, they know they [the opposition groups] are their allies. So why would they denounce them?” He was right.

The tactics used by the SCCC mirrored those used in Chile when the US was trying to destabilize the government of Salvador Allende in the early 1970s; he was eventually taken out in a US-backed anti-democratic coup. In Bolivia, there was the violence from the local youth groups but also strikes – this time organized by the business elites – designed to bring the country to its knees and keep goods from being delivered to the west of the country. The Confederation of Private Businesses called for a national shutdown if the government refused “to change its economic policies”. Altogether this was called a “civic coup”. It failed, but around the same time the US was trying to rejuvenate the opposition, according to evidence uncovered during my time there. While in Sucre, I talked to the civic committee for the department of Chuquisaca, in which the city sits, still an opposition stronghold. Félix Patzi, the president, described the civic committee’s role as keeping “an eye on government projects to make sure they follow through on their promises”. But the US embassy had been in contact with a staggering request, he recalled. “They made an offer years ago. They wanted to finance a meeting of all the civic committees in the country to bring them together in 2007,” he said. The idea was “to bring together the works of the different civic committees to encourage communication between them”. He added: “I don’t know why the US did it, but we heard from Santa Cruz that the idea was to create a national civic committee.” The US obviously knew (from its own internal documents) that such a national civic committee would be right wing and take on a political and governmental role. That must have been its intention. Mr Patzi said the Chuquisaca committee refused because it doesn’t receive outside funding, but, he added, “I don’t how many other civic committees have accepted money from the US.”

Back at the SCCC I talked to other officials who gave the impression of a tight relationship with the US. “We’ve always tried to work so that civil society in Bolivia has its own place to develop,” said Nicolas Ribera Cardozo, vice president of the SCCC. “We’ve always had a conversation with the US about it.” He said that in the past year-and-a-half as vice president he had had two conversations with the head of communications and publications at the embassy. “What they put across was how they could strengthen channels of communication,” he said. “The embassy said that they would help us in our communication work and they have a series of publications where they were putting forward their ideas.” But things were even better under Bush. “There were better programs under Bush; there were programs from USAID and DEA [the US Drug Enforcement Administration] to deal with narco-trafficking.” He added that the US-funded National Endowment for Democracy had “held informative workshops for young people about leadership”. For him it was not controversial that these programs were designed to help the opposition. “Of course they were opposition, it’s a liberal train of thought, you train people to be more aware, productive.”

The most controversial aspect of the SCCC is its youth branch, the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista (UJC), who have been called by one Bolivia analyst “paramilitary shock-troops”. They roam the streets of Santa Cruz in times of unrest and have been involved in violent attacks and atrocities against indigenous peasants, as well as damage to government buildings. The US embassy noted that the UJC “have frequently attacked pro-MAS/government people and installations”, adding, “Their actions frequently appear more racist than politically motivated. Several months ago, a group of mainly white Youth Union members attacked an altiplano migrant … The Youth Union has boasted to the press that it has signed up 7000 members to participate in the [civil defense militias] – the number is likely inflated but many of those who have signed-on are militant.” Another cable noted: “the Santa Cruz youth union seems to be radicalizing: one group waving Santa Cruz flags drove through town in a jeep emblazoned with swastikas.” In the aftermath of the Rózsa plot, the police apprehended Juan Carlos Gueber Bruno, reportedly an advisor to the UJC, and former SCCC activist, who was known as “Comandante Bruno”.

“Youth Union violence was basically in retaliation to a threat,” Mr Cardozo told me. “The youth groups did participate in these things but because they thought it was a threat and MAS started it.”

I also talked to Samuel Ruiz, president of the UJC, at the SCCC headquarters, surrounded by photos of previous presidents, including Marinkovic and Costas. “The committee was formed in 1952 as a means to protect this region, it was under attack from other regions and felt it needed to protect itself,” said Mr Ruiz. “The civic committee existed but it was felt it could do with a youth branch too.” Now the UJC has 3,000 passive members, and 500 active, according to its president. Asked three times if it has any indigenous people as members, he avoided the question twice. On the third time of asking, he replied: “What percentage? I don’t know. There are 20 representatives in different provinces that represent areas with indigenous people.” He complained that when Morales came to power he got rid of USAID and other US groups – a false claim. “It has had a huge impact,” he said. “When there were international agencies, Bolivia was much more peaceful, now we see loose arms and legs about the streets, there are kidnappings, it’s violent and dangerous whereas it wasn’t before.” The UJC had taken matters into its own hands. He said that the government was bringing people from Chile and Peru to train farmers in military combat, and that Venezuelan and Cuban doctors were actually providing military training. His paranoia about Cuban and Venezuelan influence was similar to that shown in the cables from US officials. He claimed that Morales sent campesinos to Santa Cruz to start violence at the height of the tension, even though the cables noted that Morales went out of his way to avoid casualties. “[M]ilitary planners have told us that President Morales has given them instructions not to incur civilian casualties,” one noted. “Field commanders continue to tell us they will require a written order from President Morales if asked to commit violence against opposition demonstrators.” Another said: “A senior military planner told [an embassy official] December 13 that President Morales wants the military to be careful to avoid violent confrontations with demonstrators if called upon to support Bolivian police.”

“We are monitoring government to see what they are doing,” Ruiz claimed. “But for example they are getting people from Peru to come and train campesinos who kill my friends, and they are training campesinos in war, what are we meant to do?” On the resulting violence against indigenous people, Ruiz said it was self-defense. “After last elections, Evo sent campesinos to Santa Cruz to start aggression; our organization sent out its people but only to defend itself … It’s not a direct threat,” he admitted, but it worried him because they were “training campesinos who can’t even read or go out and feed themselves”. Ruiz claimed the UJC has never had any weapons – which is also demonstrably false.

The cables also revealed US suspicions in the same period that “some Crucenos are reportedly forming fighting groups”. They would know, as they were funding them. “Sources reported that Crucenos are developing fighting/defense groups and are equipped with weapons such as long rifles and hand guns.” Ruiz claimed that fighting campesinos caused the Pando massacre. “The Venezuelans killed the indigenous people. There are photos … The Venezuelans infiltrated by entering through the Cuban doctors,” he said. “They went to Pando to form military strategy for organization, so it wasn’t chaos, but all the campesinos, armed people, were drunk, and the Venezuelans killed them by mistake because they didn’t know what side they were on, and they also shot in the leg a Bolivian journalist because they wanted them to stop filming.” The SCCC were also implicated in the Rózsa plot by Ignacio Villa Vargas, a local fixer and driver for the group, who said that a number of their members had been involved. But the SCCC believed that the Morales government organized the Rózsa plot. They did, though, admit to me that Rózsa had been to their offices, but they claimed that he was trying to infiltrate the committee on behalf of the government, disguised as a journalist. I was shown screenshots of supposed emails between Rózsa and Vice President Álvaro García Linera, which were clearly faked, dating from August 2008 and March 2009, just before the raid in the Hotel Las Americas.

The cables revealed by WikiLeaks noted that the opposition “are nervous to the point of paranoia”. They were also trying to cover their tracks with delusional conspiracy theories. As noted above, one of those suspected of involvement in the terror cell was retired president of the SCCC, Branko Marinkovic, one of the wealthiest men in Bolivia, who owns a vast soybean business and large tracts of land in the east of country. His parents were emigrants from the former Yugoslavia in the 1950s and Marinkovic became a successful businessman before moving into politics, a well-trodden route in the east of Bolivia. When the Morales government came to power and embarked on a land reform program that took fallow lands from their owners to give to landless peasants, men like Marinkovic had much to lose. In a 2007 interview with the New York Times, Marinkovic predicted that Bolivia would soon be like Zimbabwe “in which economic chaos will become the norm”. (The head of the International Monetary Fund’s western hemisphere countries unit in the same year praised the Morales government for what he referred to as its “very responsible” macroeconomic policies.) But Marinkovic continued – “speaking English with a light Texas twang he picked up at Southern Methodist University” – with a veiled threat: “If there is no legitimate international mediation in our crisis, there is going to be confrontation. And unfortunately, it is going to be bloody and painful for all Bolivians.” This was just before the Rózsa-Flores plot was scuppered.

The New York Times also noted that Croatian news services had investigated claims that Marinkovic “sought to raise a paramilitary force with mercenaries from Montenegro, where his mother was born”. Marinkovic denied the claims, but there is no doubt he was pushing for a break-up of the country in the same way Yugoslavia had been split in the 1990s. On September 1, 2008, Marinkovic flew to the US, and when he came back just a week later the east of the country was in open revolt. At around the same time, US ambassador Philip Goldberg met in secret with the governor of Santa Cruz, Rubén Costas (the meeting was captured by a news organization). Initially Marinkovic filed a lawsuit against two government officials for “slander” for linking him with the Rózsa-Flores plot. His attorney declared that he “is in Santa Cruz, will stay in Santa Cruz, and will remain in the country”, to prove he had no links to the terrorist cell. Except now he is in hiding. The UJC president divulged that he was in the US. “The government has already cast him as guilty and he can’t defend himself from here so he asked the US for political exile and they granted it to him.” Like Achá. He added that he didn’t know if Marinkovic had ever met Rózsa. Maybe it’s not so surprising. “The US has had a very good relationship with Branko Marinkovic,” said Mr Navarro, MAS minister. “When he was head of civic committee they shared their opposition to the president.” Marinkovic once jettisoned plans to visit Argentina due to distrust of the Morales-allied Kirchner government, fearing that he might be arrested there and extradited to Bolivia. During one of Marinkovic’s trips to the US, he, contrariwise, participated in strategy meetings with political consultants Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and other polling and consulting firms, according to WikiLeaks cables.

When I had finished talking to the SCCC, I asked if there was anyone else I should speak to. The spokesperson recommended former general Gary Prado, who is infamous for being the man who captured Che Guevara and handed him over to his executioners. At the time Prado was a young captain in the Bolivian army. “Where do I find him?” I asked. “He usually has coffee over there in a little café about 4pm every day,” I was told. I subsequently found out that Gary Prado is under house arrest, but as it is not enforced he moves around freely. I head along to his house in an upmarket neighborhood of Santa Cruz. “I am under house arrest but I go to work every day so there’s not much point in that,” he said. Mr Navarro had told me there was “a group of retired generals who have advised the civic committee in the event of a government attack on them”. Prado is alleged to be among them. The government has drawn attention to a meeting Prado had with Rózsa at his house. “I gave an interview to Rózsa- Flores just like I’m giving to you, he came here to this same room, we had an interview about the guerrilla Che Guevara in Bolivia, he took a picture with me here, and that’s all the contact I had with him.” Rózsa apparently thought he was the new Che Guevara, as well as the new Hemingway. But from what Prado does know, he doesn’t believe that Rózsa planned to assassinate Morales. “There was no intent of assassination, never, absolutely not,” he said. Asked why they bought in foreigners, he replied: “They were brought to Santa Cruz by some people probably to try to create a group of mercenaries to defend Santa Cruz.” Then he added that the cell was “probably created to justify political repression”. He would not offer a guess on who bought the mercenaries in. The US, he added, merely “promote seminars about democracy and freedom”.

The massacre that wasn’t

In May 2008 political turmoil rocked Bolivia and threatened civil war. Santa Cruz held an autonomy referendum, which the government claimed was a move to secession by the eastern province. Rubén Costas, the governor of Santa Cruz, had said in the run-up that the vote – which was not legally sanctioned by the National Electoral Court or recognized by the OAS – would “give birth to a new republic”. (This is the same governor whom terror suspect Mario Tadic told authorities had met with the terror cell’s leader three times and vaguely discussed “organizing something”.) As things hurtled out of control with mass protests and violence, President Morales refrained from annulling the plebiscites which took place in other departments and called a recall referendum on his own mandate. He won resoundingly, with two- thirds of the national vote. At this point, desperate and bewildered, the opposition went on strike, and sent out the UJC (the far-right youth group) to attack government buildings and local indigenous people. The defeat at the polls led the opposition to unilaterally declare “autonomy” in four of the country’s eastern provinces. One of the platforms of the autonomy movement was the rejection of central government control over profits from the country’s natural gas reserves concentrated in the region. In the Bolivian context, therefore, the term was used as a euphemism for increased control over taxation, police and public works. If autonomy was granted in the form Santa Cruz wanted, Morales’ extensive reforms would be impossible – which was obviously the aim of the request.

The strategy of the autonomy movement was to take complete control of the media luna, provoke a national crisis to destabilize the government, and convince the army to remain neutral or move against Morales. The mayor of Santa Cruz, Percy Fernández, had already called on the military to overthrow Morales’ “useless government” just before the August referendum. In this heady tumult, in September 2008, 13 indigenous peasants in the Pando department of Bolivia were massacred in violence erupting across the region between pro- government and opposition forces. The atrocity remains relatively uncontroversial – unless you are the HRF, Achá, or the Bolivian opposition. A report by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) placed the blame for the killing of the peasants at the hands of people working for the local prefecture, which was led at the time by the opposition politician Leopoldo Fernández. Fernández is still in jail in La Paz, after being arrested, in the aftermath, on charges that he was involved in ordering the attack. The US embassy, in the WikiLeaks cables, noted that he was being held “under dubious legal pretext”.

The UN report unequivocally called it a “massacre of peasants” and a “grave violation of human rights”, concluding that the massacre was committed by personnel from the local road service office, members of the Pando civic committee and others linked to the prefecture. The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) also sent a delegation to investigate, headed by Argentina’s undersecretary for human rights who concluded that the Bolivian government had acted fairly and it was the opposition that was responsible for the murders. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet called an emergency meeting in Santiago of UNASUR to discuss the Bolivian crisis. The resulting Declaration of La Moneda, signed by the 12 UNASUR governments, expressed their “full and decided support for the constitutional government of President Evo Morales”, and warned that their respective governments “will not recognize any situation that entails an attempt for a civil coup that ruptures the institutional order, or that compromises the territorial integrity of the Republic of Bolivia”. Morales, who participated in the meeting, thanked UNASUR for its support, declaring: “For the first time in South American’s history, the countries of our region are deciding how to resolve our problems without the presence of the United States.”

But men like Achá and his “affiliate” HRF saw it differently. In October, a month after the massacre, HRF dispatched their own team to Bolivia to investigate – not the massacre but the “arbitrary detention” of “opposition members and at least one journalist”. HRF’s sources in Bolivia, presumably Achá, were telling it how serious the situation was. “Preliminary research done by our staff and reports sent to us from Bolivian civil society advocates suggest that the recent arrests of journalists and members of the opposition in Bolivia are politically motivated,” said Sarah Wasserman, chief operating officer of HRF. The report from Achá, as mentioned by the US ambassador, posited that the MAS government had actually initiated the murders. And the HRF went on to link the massacre to a speech by government minister Ramón Quintana exhorting government sympathizers to take Pando governor Leopoldo Fernández “to the end of the world” and “give him an epitaph: Prefect, rest in peace and live with the worms. “The speech preceded violence that erupted on September 11, 12 and 13 in Pando, where more than 20 people were murdered for political reasons,” they noted. The report by the Bolivian “affiliate” of the HRF blames the massacre on Morales and his national executive officers. “The deterioration of the rule of law, individual rights … do not allow the existence of a democratic system,” the report concluded. “In Bolivia, with this background, it outlines the installation of a regime despotic and dictatorial presided by Evo Morales.”

To be fair, there were other NGOs which came to a similar conclusion. One was the aforementioned UnoAmerica, another “human rights” group based in Colombia, whose logo shows crosshairs in the ‘o’ in their name. It was founded in 2008 by Alejandro Peña Esclusa, who is now detained in his home country, Venezuela, for allegedly being found with detonators and 2lb of explosives in his home. The Venezuelan government claims he has close ties to the CIA, and was involved in the 2002 US-backed coup that temporarily deposed Hugo Chávez. In one video, Esclusa is seen insisting on a plan for massive protests across Venezuela, making the government unable to control it. “It is a more efficient mechanism that generates a political crisis and a crisis of instability that forces the regime to withdraw the reform,” he says. UnoAmerica became heavily involved in Bolivia after the Pando massacre, sending a team on a five-day mission to investigate what had happened. To conduct the investigation they partnered with NGOs from Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay and Venezuela (whose names read like a Who’s Who of fascists in Latin America). Taking part from Argentina was El Movimiento por la Verdadera Historia, or Movement for the True History, a group which seeks to bring to justice “subversives” working against the US-backed fascist junta that ruled from 1976 to 1983 and murdered an estimated 30,000 people. One of its Argentina delegates was Jorge Mones Ruiz, an intelligence officer of the Argentine army in Bolivia during last dictatorship. (The government also claimed that the Rózsa cell had links with fascist groups in Argentina, which go by the name of carapintadas or “painted faces”.)

The joint report concluded that “the government of President Evo Morales had planned and executed the violent acts”. It claimed it had “sufficient information to demonstrate the responsibility of the Evo Morales administration in the so called Pando Massacre”. The WikiLeaks cables revealed that the US embassy was receiving highly questionable intelligence like this from Achá and other contacts in the opposition, without applying the constant cynicism it reserved for MAS statements. In conversation with a political officer from the embassy, one contact “alleged the MAS deliberately fomented unrest in Pando in September to justify a military siege, depose Prefect Leopoldo Fernandez, and arrest opposition-aligned leaders to swing the balance of power to the MAS in the Senate”. It is not countered. Another cable noted after the September 2008 violence in Pando: “the government illegally jailed Prefect Leopoldo Fernandez and violently detained over forty more, many of them prominent political opposition members.” The UN had said that Fernández’s jailing was not illegal.

We’ll take care of him

The most active of the many US agencies working in Bolivia is USAID, the main foreign aid arm of the US government. USAID poured money into the country: between 1964 and 1979, it contributed more than $1.5 billion, trying to build a citizenry and investor climate conducive to US corporate needs. For nearly half a century it has carried out its ostensible goal of providing “economic and humanitarian assistance” – a gift “from the American people”. The agency operates around the world in a similar capacity, and invests billions of dollars annually on projects that span from “democracy promotion” to “judicial reform”.

Its operations are controversial. The Morales administration has continually said that it uses its money to push the strategic goals of the US government under the cloak of “development”, claims denied by the US government. The Bolivian government also derides the lack of transparency, in comparison with EU aid money, for its programs. Mark Feierstein, USAID assistant administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean, put its raison d’être bluntly in December 2010 when he said: “USAID’s programs are not charity … they are not only from the

American people, as the agency’s motto says, they are for the American people.” As an aside, Mr Feierstein was a key campaign consultant to the former president Lozada (Goni) who fled to the US to avoid facing trial for the massacre of protesters in La Paz. There is now an attempt to prosecute him under the Aliens Tort Statute for his role in the murders. (Feierstein has never expressed regret about the campaign; in fact, the same firm did polling for Morales’ opponent, Manfred Reyes Villa, in 2009.)

Like other methods and agencies used to control democracies in Latin America and around the world, it is hard to pin down USAID. But on-the-ground interviews, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and the WikiLeaks cables have made it possible to unearth the strategies this agency uses to keep its stranglehold on Bolivia, at the same time providing a template for how it is used across the region to undermine left-wing democratic governments. There is no doubt how USAID personnel felt about Morales before he came into power, and one young American student heard first-hand their plans for him. In the summer of 2005, he found himself in La Paz learning Spanish on a break from university when the powder keg of political resistance in the city blew up. President Carlos Mesa – who had taken over from Goni in 2003 after the massacre of protesters in La Paz – had just stepped down. The student decided to go on a bike trip. “Basically I went down the ‘Death Road’, the world’s most dangerous road, with some other gringos,” he said, not wanting to be named. “There were some folks from the US embassy and USAID on the trip. I remember them having a discussion on the road down to [the city of ] Coroico, talking about not wanting Evo to get into power. They said something along the lines of, ‘We can’t let Evo get into power’.”

In fact, the officials went further. “There were two things that were said, one was ‘We can’t let Evo get into power’, and then something along the lines of, it struck me, it was harsher than that, it was something along the lines of, ‘We’ll have to take care of him’. It was ambiguous enough that it could be interpreted that we have to take him out, which I don’t think is what they meant. But when they said it I thought, ‘Whoa, I can’t believe they are saying this, they don’t even know me’.” The conversation continued as the group descended the mountain. “I’m assuming they thought I was sympathetic,” he said. “This was right in the middle of the protests and the president resigning, so a lot of the tourists had fled Bolivia, so perhaps they thought I was there because I was working for some sympathetic capacity, maybe working for an international corporation, or related to the embassy or something. It shocked me at the time. One, it seemed weird to have this conversation in public, because not everybody is sympathetic. And two it seemed like they were meddling in democracy, people that shouldn’t be involved in those things, the US embassy and USAID shouldn’t have anything to do with voting a president into power or not.”

But involved they were and would remain as Morales eventually did take power.

Much important work has been carried out on this topic by the investigative journalist Jeremy Bigwood in the period before MAS came to power, but his Freedom of Information Act requests stopped being answered when he asked for information about projects after the election of 2005. What Bigwood unearthed from before 2005 supports the testimony of the American student. Early on, the MAS party was fingered as a problem for the US that had to be dealt with. In a declassified July 2002 letter from the US embassy, a planned USAID political party reform project was outlined which aimed to “help build moderate, pro- democracy political parties that can serve as a counterweight to the radical [MAS]”. The next section, presumably more open on details, was redacted. A series of emails from USAID functionaries in Bolivia also detailed attempts to form relationships between the US government and indigenous groups in the coca growing region of the Chapare (the sector from which Morales emerged) and the eastern departments, aiming, as Bigwood explained, to “create a common USAID-guided front against … the MAS”. A few years into the MAS government, USAID made itself so unpopular in the Chapare region that its local leaders in 2008 suspended all projects funded by the agency. They said they would replace the funding with money from Chávez’s Venezuela. In Pando, the mayors signed a declaration in 2008 also expelling USAID. “No foreign program, least of all those from USAID, will solve our problems of poverty, physical integration, family prosperity and human development while we ourselves don’t decide the future,” it said.

I managed to procure documents that relate to the operations of projects since 2005, and they show a similar effort to weaken the power and popularity of the MAS government. The USAID tactic is not the overthrow of the government, but the slow transformation of Bolivian society from its participatory democracy to the type of democracy it had before: controlled by the US and good for investors. The Bolivian example is important because it provides a template of how USAID tries to control Latin American democracies that have “got out of control” and make them work “for the American people”, or American business interests.

Of course, USAID pitches itself as something completely different. In one cable from La Paz, the ambassador wrote: “We will continue to counter misunderstandings about USAID’s transparency and apolitical nature with reality.” But the reality is that the agency is not transparent or apolitical. And its own internal documents reveal as much. USAID maintains it is transparent with the money it invests in the country, but the Bolivian government claims large sums are being handed out without its knowledge, in contravention of usual aid etiquette. In the WikiLeaks cables, Morales tells the US he wants to start an “open registry to monitor aid”, but it was not supported by the US. The Bolivian government’s estimate that 70 percent of aid money is unaccounted for appears overstated, but there is clear evidence that money was being spent without the knowledge of the government.

After one spate of criticism of USAID programs by Morales, the US ambassador noted that the country “cannot afford to risk USD120 million in assistance” from the agency (it works out as about $12 for every Bolivian). In another, it is noted: “we’re spending about $90 million annually to further social and economic inclusion of Bolivia’s historically marginalized indigenous groups and to support democratic institutions and processes, including decentralized governance.” But an American journalist living in La Paz was present at an emergency meeting called by the US embassy to explain USAID’s activities to foreign journalists, after another round of criticism. She was given a breakdown of spending by USAID. “This information was given to the small group of reporters gathered to use as background in stories,” she told me. It outlined $16.8 million to USAID health programs, $19.2 million to integrated alternative development (alternative to coca production), $15.3 million to environmental and economic development programs, and $22 million to counter-narcotics. It added up to $73.3 million. But the ambassador had said in the cable that $120 million was invested in Bolivia per year. Where was the other $50 million going?

Internal evaluation documents give an indication of why some projects are best kept secret. I procured a host of documents on USAID “democracy promotion” programs in Bolivia in the period after the Morales government was elected. In one, outlining the goals and success of its “administration of justice” programs which have run in the country for 17 years – “among the largest in Latin America” – the group was explicit about where its money was going. “USAID/ Bolivia programs include support to promote decentralization and municipal strengthening, support to Congress and political parties,” it noted. There is no mention of which political parties it is “supporting” but this is candid language that the group and the US embassy have never used in public. (Morales has said that one mayor told him that USAID offered him $15,000 to $25,000 to oppose the president.) Decentralization in this context is also a euphemism for strengthening the opposition. One of USAID’s central functions in Bolivia, ramped up since 2005, has been moving power away from central government, an effort which clearly chimes with the interests of the opposition in the east.

The justice project was conceived by USAID and Bolivian officials before the 2005 election that brought Evo Morales to power, and coordinators admit that “the personnel changes at the higher echelons” of the government “completely changed the atmosphere” in which it worked. The project hoped to open a training school for public defenders, but in mid-2007 it was suspended, “a prime example of the project being ‘overtaken by events’ that were completely outside the control of … USAID,” the evaluation noted. Internally, USAID was very critical of the Morales government on the subject, commenting that the Bar Associations of Bolivia have been “significantly weakened in the past few years” by the government’s policies. As is customary in projects of this kind, USAID paid subcontractors to carry out their functions, enhancing the already intricate web of institutions and clouding accountability. This project was run by Checchi and Company Consulting, set up in 1973 by economist and Democratic donor Vincent Checchi, which then brought on board the State University of New York and Partners of the Americas. One of the main ways USAID exerts influence – in this justice program but also through its other activities – is through training programs. These programs school young Bolivians in the “American way”.

In Sucre, I spoke to Ramiro Velasquez, an administrator in the local government offices who has worked for a USAID-funded program in the city. He said it was set up by a consultancy firm, funded by USAID, which has a subsidiary called Fortalecimiento Identidad de Democracia, or FIDEM. “They were looking for Bolivian operators in every department to do their work,” he said. “FIDEM was looking for an NGO to do the work and they would look for operators. They were in La Paz, Oruro, Potosi, and Sucre.” Mr Velasquez was asked to be an operator and told they wanted him to run courses on “democracy and participation”, a program eventually shut down by the Morales government. “This project was aimed at young people,” he said. “So to get young people, you had to get into universities and social movements and state institutions, even the church.” In the end 600 young people signed up. The courses took on two phases with the first workshops an opportunity to select around 20 young people to move on to La Paz for the second phase, carried out by FIDEM and another NGO. It was called “leadership training”, ostensibly to create a new generation of Bolivian leaders. But they had to have the right opinions. “They were teaching about democracy but not the type of democracy Evo and Bolivians have,” he said. “They were teaching them about representative democracy not participatory democracy … It was clearly to create leaders for the opposition.”

The cables from La Paz support such a conclusion. One visiting official went to a “civic education project funded by USAID through the NGO FIDEM and implemented by the Santa Cruz binational center”. Its aim was to grow a “civic responsibility” arm in addition to its educational and cultural activities. “The project was reaching 21,000 (out of 150,000) residents in the marginalized neighbourhood ‘Plan 3000’ which is widely thought to be a MAS stronghold,” it added, as if to explain why it was a good thing. The local residents were “enthusiastic” about the initiative, it noted. The same cable registered that Santa Cruz residents were “determined as much as possible to halt democratic back-sliding. Their main request to us is to report accurately to Washington and the international community what is really happening in Bolivia.” Vice President García Linera repeatedly told the US embassy he opposed democracy programs like FIDEM’s, because they strive to “win the hearts and minds”, presenting a vision of democracy that differs from the government’s. It was true. FIDEM works in eight of the nine departments in Bolivia (three of which are governed by democratically elected MAS prefects) providing the kind of state-building training and technical assistance that USAID and other donors provide worldwide. The work – regional development planning, service delivery, financial planning and more – is technical and non-political. Its focus on departmental authorities was planned to weaken MAS, as was admitted in the cables: “MAS’s goals [is] strengthening municipal governments to the detriment of departmental governments, thus weakening one of the MAS’s main sources of opposition.”

Also in Sucre, I talked to the MAS mayor, Verónica Berrios Vergara, who has been under concerted attack since taking her position in 2008. The city had been the venue of intense violent unrest in 2007 when the constituent assembly, given the responsibility of writing a new constitution, was placed there. In 2008, an opposition candidate was voted into the position of mayor in Sucre, but was disqualified because he was under a criminal charge. Ms Vergara took his place on a decision of the municipal council, causing an outbreak of violence and unrest. “Vested interests were behind the anger of the opposition and that led to us living the most difficult moment in Sucre in many years,” she told me. She said various explosives were thrown at the mayor’s headquarters and the dissidents tried to kill her on a number of occasions. “One of the questions we asked ourselves at the time is where these students got the money from, because they had the money to buy lots of explosives. They don’t even usually have enough for rent and food, where did they get the money for them from?” She began to cry as she recounted her experiences at the sharp end of the turmoil in Bolivia. “I do fear that these groups are still waiting in the wings and at any point they could come out and do something to me,” she said. “This is really about racism and also that this local government and national government are threatening business interests.” She believed that USAID was behind the funding to some of these groups: “The fact that the Rózsa affair was taking place at the same time and there were question marks over USAID’s work and suggestions they were trying to overthrow the government leads me to question where the money was coming from.” At the time it sparked violence in the streets of the city, which Ms Vergara thinks USAID was behind. “They are in union with the opposition and media to stand in the way of the government’s development plans in the country.”

Building democracy an investor-friendly business climate

USAID had another reason to dislike President Morales and his government: they weren’t good for business. The investment climate in Bolivia, which had been open for business to US transnationals for decades, was turning into a more hostile place. Their fears were shared by their natural allies among the oligarchy of European descent in the east of Bolivia. Both were increasingly scared of the economic

program of the Morales government, which has provided a model for developing countries around the world: achieving high growth, as well as reductions in poverty, while part-nationalizing key industries. The Bolivian government, even when composed of ruthless dictators, maintained an investor-friendly business climate, which saw US mining companies, such as Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp, take advantage of the vast natural resources in the country as the Spanish had done before them. Bolivia’s major exports to the United States are tin, gold, jewellery and wood products. For a long time, foreign investors were accorded national treatment, and foreign owners of companies enjoyed virtually no restriction. Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Bolivia grew to $7 billion in stock during 1996–2002, nearly all of which went to the business interests in the east.

Concern about nationalization crops up frequently in the cables from La Paz. “There is … rampant speculation about President Morales’ traditional May 1st speech, in which he is expected by many to announce nationalization of companies based in Santa Cruz, potentially including Cotas or food industries,” one reads. “If the latter, many expect Branko Marinkovic’s cooking oil and other companies to be taken in the name of ‘food security’.” The cables from La Paz do not pull punches when outlining their opposition to the economic thinking of the MAS government. One advisor to Morales, an economics professor is, one cable notes, “steeped in out- dated socialist economic theories and has yet to accept the practical realities of a globalized economy”. It adds that he “may be beginning to understand the real impact of free trade on job creation”, but, unforgivably, “he appears to believe that markets in Venezuela and China serve as alternatives to US markets. He has told Bolivian exporters to seek markets outside the United States, unconvinced that the US is crucial to their trade.” It notes that he recently returned from Venezuela after negotiating an agreement to buy Bolivian soy. “Additionally, he has regularly antagonized other businesses, telling them that the President’s Dignity Tariff, a new lower price meant to provide cheap electricity to Bolivians is a done deal, remarking that the private sector should either get on board or suffer.”

USAID had a plan to deal with this. One of the most important components of the justice project is “promotion of legal security”, through which “it was hoped that the business and investment climate in Bolivia would be improved”. The principal donor for this purpose was USAID and the project was budgeted $4.8 million over five years. It chimed with the sentiment in cables from La Paz, one of which noted, the “key areas of concern in Bolivia currently are democracy, narcotics, and protection for US investments”(my emphasis). The justice project sought “reforms in the commercial and administrative law areas” as well as “business organization assistance and training”. For this purpose, USAID funding would help develop a civil, commercial and administrative law curriculum for law schools in Bolivia. In a sign of the penetration of USAID into the highest echelons of the justice system, USAID and the Bolivian Supreme Court jointly published a document called Civil and Commercial Justice in Bolivia: Diagnosis and Recommendations for Change, which urged the creation of a specialized commercial law jurisdiction. It would “enhance the investment climate of Bolivia”, while the “establishment of a good business climate is essential to attracting investment” and will “maintain and improve its competitiveness”. It noted: “This component was important to the overall success of the … project due to the fact that it enlisted enthusiastic support from many private sector actors, while also furthering the goal of improving the investment and business climate in Bolivia.” The agency worked with its “partner organization”, the National Chamber of Commerce, in order to replicate and strengthen arbitration centers through local chambers of commerce (big donors to civic committees). “If Bolivia wants to attract foreign investment … then it will need legal security for investors,” it noted. “Should there be an opportunity to continue the work in this area, it would be of high importance for the development of Bolivia.” Their natural allies in this task were organizations like CAINCO, a business confederation in Santa Cruz. In the aftermath of the Rózsa shoot-out, another suspect, Alejandro Melgar, who was a key figure in CAINCO, fled the country. Eduardo Paz, the president of CAINCO, was also an investor in the Santa Cruz civic committee. One cable noted that “The main impact [of nationalization] has been to halt new investment in the [energy] sector, which Bolivia needs to meet domestic demand and fulfil contractual obligations to Brazil and Argentina.” It added that “[as] a political measure, however, the ‘nationalization’ remains wildly popular.” It was also successful. In June 2011, Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, raised Bolivia’s credit ratings by one notch, praising President Evo Morales’ “prudent” macroeconomic policies which allowed for a steady decline in the country’s debt ratios.

The truth was that the US embassy was fearful for US mining investments, despite high-level Bolivian officials giving “repeated assurances that the Morales administration will respect existing US mining interests”.

Threats that the Bolivian government would nationalize the mining industry – including taking over a smelter owned by Swiss company Glencore (which had been sold by ex-president Goni) – scared them. “We continue to urge the [Government of Bolivia] to respect existing mining concessions and to limit tax and royalty hikes,” one cable noted. In other words, create a good “business climate” at the expense of the population. The US embassy viewed the Morales administration as contrary to its interests. “Strengthening and supporting democracy in Bolivia is our mission’s primary concern,” notes another cable. But in the next line it says: “Although the ruling MAS party and President Evo Morales were elected with a clear majority in fair and open elections, their actions since assuming power have often displayed anti-democratic tendencies.” Elsewhere the cables note the “overwhelming victory” of MAS in elections. Despite this, the US called Morales a “leader with strong anti-democratic tendencies” who “manipulates the media”. His closest advisors were compared to “back alley thugs”.

In fact, the democratic credentials and popular mandate of the MAS government are among the most stellar in the world. First elected to the presidency in December 2005 by 54 percent of the popular vote, nearly double the 29 percent of his nearest rival, Morales was re-elected in December 2009 by 67 percent of the public vote, more than double the percentage won by his nearest opponent, Manfred Reyes Villa. In between these landslides, Morales won the recall referendum called in the face of the “autonomy movement” in August 2008 with 67 percent of the public voting for him to be returned. Just five months later, in January 2009, Morales won the constitutional referendum with 61 percent voting in favor, to 39 percent against. In 2014, he won yet another landslide. But the embassy was disparaging of these achievements, saying Morales was “like a struggling student in the areas of economics and international relations decision-making”. It also noted his apparent desire to become a dictator: “[As] an admirer of Cuban President Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, Morales probably is drawn by the longevity of their time in power and seeks to emulate their ‘success’.” It was rubbish. The referendum in 2009 stipulated a two- term limit for the presidency. On the occasion of a foreign dignitary visiting, the ambassador pushed him “to encourage Morales to follow a democratic path”, alongside, of course, pushing him “to respect US mining interests to take advantage of free trade”.

The cables are full of fear about US investments. “One US investment which is vulnerable is San Cristobal mine, which is 65 percent owned by Apex Silver,” said one cable. “San Cristobal would be particularly hard-hit by a bill currently in Congress, which would increase mining taxes. Although the Bolivian government claims to want a fifty-fifty split of profits, the proposed tax increases actually result in, on average, a 60 percent government take of profits.” Although fantastically rich in silver and other mineral wealth, in the past the Bolivian people had never benefitted and stayed poor.

Trading bribes

The US was also using trade deals as leverage in trying to get MAS to change its economic outlook. In September 2008, President Bush suspended the crucial trade preferences that Bolivia enjoyed – alongside Colombia, Ecuador and Peru – under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA). The country has lost millions of dollars in exports because of this punitive action. The ostensible reason was Bolivia’s uncooperative attitude to coca eradication in the country, but political and economic motives were thought to be highly relevant. A Reuters article written a few weeks afterward noted that “the decision came one day after five leading US business groups urged the Bush administration and Congress to consider ending trade benefits for both Bolivia and Ecuador because of what they described as inadequate protections for foreign investors in both countries”. The next month, in November, President Morales announced that the DEA would be expelled from the country. For decades, hundreds of DEA agents swarmed the northern Pando and Beni regions, destroying coca crops and, in the process, becoming implicated in massacres of the indigenous cocaleros. Largely given a free rein to carry out military operations or eradication by successive governments eager to please their masters, the former cocalero Morales wasn’t so easy to convince. He charged that the DEA was carrying out “political espionage”, and “financing criminal groups so that they could act against authorities, even the president”.

The goal of the DEA, one cable noted, “is to provide assistance to achieve US goals while keeping the [government of Bolivia] out in front”. In 2008, Morales suspended DEA operations in Bolivia and expelled its 37 agents in the country. He named Steven Faucette, the regional agent of the DEA in Santa Cruz, as a spy, saying that he had made trips to cities in the media luna provinces of Beni and Pando with the objective of financing the civic committees which were committed to carrying out a “civic coup”. The US was also using its aid as leverage to keep the DEA in Bolivia. “The Ambassador suggested that if eradication is to be stopped and USG involvement in the Chapare ended … we could begin shutting off our multi-million dollar assistance programs now,” one cable noted. Many had long said that the DEA was acting as a front for the CIA in Bolivia. (The agency refused my request for information through the Freedom of Information Act, as did the National Security Agency.) The cables are full of criticism of Morales for failing to heed the US’s call for areas it specified to be cleared of coca. It also called the EU effort “relatively modest and narrowly-focused”.

But the US preoccupation with eradication in Bolivia, evidenced in the cables, is strange. According to one cable, the DEA estimated that “less than one percent of cocaine seized in the US can be chemically traced back to Bolivia”. One percent. The US was also alone in blocking a UN resolution on making the coca leaf sacred in 2011. The tension surfaced even though the Morales government was being largely compliant. The cables present successes like 133 factories being raided in El Alto during the first 10 months of 2008. During the first full year of Morales’s tenure, the amount of coca grown in Bolivia increased around 5 percent. In Colombia, the US ally, it jumped 27 percent in the same period, according to UN statistics.

The opposition I talked to, interestingly, were all in support of the DEA. The spokesperson for the SCCC said that during his time as a journalist working on the topic of narco-trafficking, he saw the DEA and the US embassy dealing with the issue properly: “They were teaching us about how the drugs workers work, how they buy drugs, it helped us.” Another vital US agency which works in Bolivia is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), created by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 to “promote democracy”, but with a history of doing the opposite. In Bolivia it has focused on potentially recalcitrant indigenous areas, promoting the “American way” to the young. I obtained the proposals for various Bolivian projects granted money by the NED. The tactic of “training civil society” to gain a stranglehold on communities around Bolivia was exactly the same as that used by USAID projects. One project, Observancia, which ran from 2008 to 2009 and cost $54,664, was typical. It worked in eight municipalities in the country and helped in the “training of municipal functionaries and civil society”. The aim was to create future “municipal candidates” who would be “inserted into government programmes”. Another project, from 2006 to 2007 and costing $48,000, focused on Uriondo, Tarija, which sits in the media luna opposition stronghold. The grant was given at a politically tumultuous time. The report mentioned that the area of Tarija has the largest hydrocarbon deposits in the country, and the project wants “to increase the capacity” and “strengthen local government” of Uriondo, particularly by improving how the media communicates with the locals. Other projects look to “encourage political citizenship among young people”.

In one project in Totora, Cochabamba, the proposal notes that the population are mostly Quechua speaking and a lot more “politicized” than in Uriondo, adding that “there exists … an obstinate opposition to what they term as ‘neoliberal’, and they reject any advances from such parties”. Finally, it noted that the people of Totora organize themselves through a model of “corporativism” – the imposition of “a logic of the majoritarianism”, which rejects a form of democracy respectful of any differences. “This prompts us to consider that in the future we should include democratic values, in all sectors of society, not just as a citizen’s exercise when voting for their electoral representatives, but also with the logical respect that democracy has in other contemporary global societies,” the proposal noted. But the fact that the people of Totora organize themselves into collectives and make decisions collectively is common among indigenous groups throughout the country. The organization writing the proposal, however, concluded that this is in fact undemocratic and that they should introduce programs that demonstrate how undemocratic this form of democracy is compared with “other global societies”.

Another project called for better election monitoring. It suggested “revising the referendum votes for 2008 and 2009, where, in some regions, participation is registered at 100 percent and where the vote in favor of President Morales is of a similar percentage, something which does not have antecedents”. This accusation is questionable because in many departments people vote collectively – a tradition within many indigenous  groups.

One project awarded $36,450 to the Bolivian National Press Association. Its ostensible aim was to defend freedom of expression “through the supervision and documentation of violations and threats against journalists” and “improve the professionalism and impartiality of Bolivian journalists”. However, its focus is trained on the government, in keeping with US embassy fears about Venezuelan influence. “The [National Press Association of Bolivia] denounces that the action the government of Morales has taken, something which has never happened under a democratic government, total control of the National Company of Bolivian Television (ENTB), when he integrated the directors with state ministers.” In another project, in Totora, it was noted that they were “expecting – in the coming months – the installation of a community radio transmitter, financed by the Venezuelan government, which forms part of a communications network which that regime has been promoting”. A later section called 2008 “the worst year for freedom of expression since the return to democracy” with “one dead and over a hundred attacks”. The Santa Cruz UJC and its allies committed a number of these attacks. In one case: “A police officer sprayed pepper spray at a journalist who approached the Vice President of the Santa Cruz Youth Union.” The NED criticized Evo Morales for denouncing La Razon newspaper, even though coverage of the president Morales in that newspaper has been overtly racist for years, with racist caricatures and racist commentary.

Very measured

As in smaller countries in the region, such as Haiti, the US embassy in Bolivia wielded huge power through the second half of the 20th century, often more than the sovereign government itself. The US embassy in La Paz is the second largest in Latin America (slightly

smaller than in Brazil), despite the country having a population of just 9 million people. Through the last 50 years, the US had supported coups to get “their” dictators in place (Hugo Banzer), lent public relations specialists to get “their” presidents in place when democracy returned (Goni), and sent their brightest economists to “restructure” the economy in their image (Jeffrey Sachs). Now, the US provides sanctuary for “their” presidents wanted for crimes against humanity (Goni, again). But such a situation could give rise to complacency. And the election of the democratic socialist government of MAS in Bolivia marked the first time the country threatened to break free of US control. As such, relationships with ambassadors from the US became increasingly strained as the power dynamic switched around, and the sovereign government issued orders to the embassy, not the other way around. Maria Beatriz Souviron, Bolivian ambassador to the UK, told me: “The US ambassador before Morales had a lot of influence over the politics in our country, even pushing to take domestic decisions at some points.” She added: “We want some sovereignty in our country and to make our own decisions. And of course the former ambassador [Goldberg] was involved with the opposition.”

The MAS government accused ambassador Philip Goldberg of “subversive actions” which included a “disinformation campaign” in the lead-up to the recall referendum, as he tried to unite the opposition. In late 2007, the US embassy began moving openly to meet with the right-wing opposition in the media luna. Ambassador Goldberg was photographed in Santa Cruz with a leading business magnate who backed the autonomy movement, and a well-known Colombian narco-trafficker who had been detained by the local police. Morales, in revealing the photo, said the trafficker was linked to right-wing paramilitary organizations in Colombia. In response, the US embassy asserted that it couldn’t vet everyone who appeared in a photo with the ambassador. Goldberg was expelled because of his meetings with opposition figures at the most on-edge period of the battle with the MAS government. In 2008, he was photographed having a secret meeting with opposition governor Rubén Costas. The US embassy liked Costas. In one cable it was noted: “Costas’ willingness to work with the United States would make him a solid democratic partner.” It also praised his “politically savvy use of the media to advance the interests of the media luna”.

This government anger at US embassy interference culminated in September 2009 when ambassador Goldberg was expelled from the country. He has still not been replaced, the US embassy having to make do with the diplomatic downgrade of a chargé d’affaires. The US retaliated by expelling the Bolivian ambassador to Washington. “The US embassy is historically used to calling the shots in Bolivia, violating our sovereignty, treating us like a banana republic,” said Gustavo Guzman, the ambassador who was expelled from Washington. Goldberg had an interesting history, which made him a curious appointment by President George W. Bush in October 2006. Between 1994 and 1996 he had served as State Department desk officer for Bosnia and as special assistant to the late Richard Holbrooke, who had been instrumental in brokering the Dayton Accords and then the NATO military campaign against Serbia in 1999. From 2004 to 2006, Goldberg served as chief of mission in Pristina, Kosovo. In other words, he was used to dealing with countries that were breaking up into their constituent parts.

The leaders of the Santa Cruz Civic Committee certainly liked him. “My overall impression of Goldberg is that he was very measured politically,” said its vice president. “Compared to the two ambassadors that preceded. They were very openly political, they got involved a great deal, and compared to them Goldberg was measured.”

The US embassy had been overtly hostile to Morales from the start, and the previous two ambassadors had openly tried to halt his rise to power. In 2002, when Morales narrowly lost his first presidential bid, US ambassador Manuel Rocha, the first Bush appointment, openly campaigned against him, threatening: “If you elect those who want Bolivia to become a major cocaine exporter again, this will endanger the future of US assistance to Bolivia.” In 2003, the second Bush appointment, David N. Greenlee, was put in place, and he had a long history with Bolivia. He served in the Peace Corps in Bolivia, 1965–67, and met his wife in the country. Later he served as a political officer at the US embassy in La Paz, 1977–79, dealing with issues, one think-tank noted, such as communism, military coups and Operation Condor, the continent-wide terror network set up by General Pinochet with the help of the US government. He returned as deputy chief of mission, 1987–89. When back as ambassador, Greenlee openly tried to scupper MAS’s ascent. In March 2003, for example, he sent a letter to Carlos Mesa, then president, alleging, falsely, that MAS was planning a coup in the summer. The MAS government hoped that things would change with President Obama’s election, but MAS officials say it has been no different. In fact, President Obama is now thought to have deployed special operations forces to Bolivia, while he supported the illegitimate post-coup election in Honduras. “President Obama lied to Latin America when he told us in Trinidad and Tobago that there are not senior and junior partners,” said President Morales in 2009.

While in La Paz I arranged an interview with the US chargé d’affaires, John S. Creamer, who has served in embassies in Nicaragua, Argentina and Colombia. I was not allowed to record the interview, but took notes. “The Bush administration took a heavy toll on perceptions of the US, that’s an empirical fact,” he said. He denied knowing of the various foundations – HRF and UnoAmerica – but is “sceptical” they were involved in the Rózsa plot. It became clear later that the US embassy is aware of these groups, and is being briefed by them. Mr Creamer told me there was “growing opposition” from within MAS against the leadership, an interesting observation, as it is a strategy that the government itself is increasingly wary of. “Evo is now scared that the new tactic is the opposition infiltrating the government and MAS, in order to take power from within,” Mr Mendoza, the Sucre senator, had told me. The embassy is obviously still in close contact with the radical elements in the east, as Mr Creamer defends the violence of the UJC and other radical opposition elements, arguing self-defense. “It’s natural to defend yourself,” he said, as we finish.

The international community have also been accused of supporting the break-up of the country. I talked to the British ambassador, Nigel Baker, in La Paz, who seemed to agree with the autonomists. “I think the long-term destiny for Bolivia … is some form of federalist structure,” he said. “The topography of the country, the different character of different peoples in different parts of the country, different economic structures, all work in favor in Bolivia of greater autonomy.” He thought the US had entirely benign intentions: “I think historical record will show that the US was operating correctly in Bolivia and trying to work with all political groups, people of all political colors, to work with and strengthen Bolivian democracy.” The WikiLeaks cables reveal that opposition politicians were openly approaching the US embassy for support in elections. One opposition politician “stands out as a potential national opposition leader,” one cable noted, before adding that in a meeting with embassy officers he had “privately expressed his interest in obtaining US support to run for the presidency”.

One the major concerns for the US after Morales came to power was Bolivia moving out of its traditional sphere of influence and making alliances and economic deals with other countries: thumbing its nose at its traditional patron. Among the people consulted by USAID for one its projects was Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé, a former president of Bolivia who controversially decommissioned the country’s only air-defense system, purchased from China, putting Bolivia under the basic military control of the US. It was people like this the US was used to dealing with. But Morales no longer countenanced such servility. At the same time, China embraced the MAS government openly (largely because of the lithium reserves, no doubt), and did not seem as intent to undermine the democratically elected government as the US was. They also provided an alternative source of investment, worrying US planners. And it wasn’t just China. In 2008, it was announced that Bolivia had signed a deal with state-owned Russian gas company Gazprom to explore and produce natural gas in the country. State-owned oil and gas company, YPFB, which was nationalized by the MAS government, signed the deal to exploit South America’s second-largest reserves, concentrated in the southeast.

Bolivia also announced more military purchases from China and Russia, after the US blocked Bolivian purchases of Czech aircraft. Most worryingly for the US, Venezuela and Cuba were also increasing their presence, a fear constantly discussed in the cables. One cable from La Paz noted: “Cuban and Venezuelan advice, interference, and assistance continue to be a serious concern.” The concern is listed as “Cuban doctors and newly inaugurated hospitals bring medical care to isolated communities”, while Venezuela provided micro-credit financing to small businesses. Unlike USAID, of course, “Venezuelan funding is pouring into the country with no transparency or accountability, further damaging the democratic process.” Venezuelan funding for the media was a particular “issue of concern”, which, we have seen, was being fought as a proxy war through the NED’s programs. One cable worried “that media will be sold without public knowledge, changing the opinion-leader landscape in the country”, i.e. the anti-Morales bias. The cable even noted that the main newspaper, La Razon, has a “generally anti- [government of Bolivia] stance”.

In February 2008, a story broke about a Fulbright scholar in Bolivia who had been asked to spy on Cubans and Venezuelans in the country. John Alexander van Schaick said that he was told by regional security officer Vincent Cooper at the US embassy “to provide the names, addresses and activities of any Venezuelan or Cuban doctors or field workers” he came across while he was in Bolivia.7 His account was supported by similar testimony from Peace Corps members and staff who were all told by Mr Cooper to gather information on Cuban and Venezuelan nationals. Three days after the story broke, it was announced that Mr Cooper would not be returning to Bolivia. Morales called it the “expulsion” of a “man who conducted North American espionage”, an accusation with some justice. Many believed it was the tip of the iceberg. “We had a mutual friend, and [van Schaick] approached me in December 2007,” Jean Friedman-Rudovsky, the American journalist living in La Paz who broke the story, told me. “It took a couple months to get a hold on the Peace Corps angle, I had heard lots of rumors, but hadn’t been able to substantiate them. The Peace Corps duty director went on record at the time saying Vincent Cooper came and gave these inappropriate instructions to the group.”

The volunteers were in a moral quandary about what to do. “Some kids were worried about the message coming from the embassy, one girl was planning on living with a Cuban family; she wondered if she would have to collect information on them,” said Friedman-Rudovsky. The director and the Peace Corps staff complained to the US embassy, remonstrating that they couldn’t act like an intelligence service for the US government. Four months later, however, van Schaick received the same instructions. “In general, not much has changed in terms of US-Bolivia since Obama came into power,” said Friedman-Rudovsky. The ambassador never admitted it had happened; he merely commented that if these instructions had been given, it went against US policy. But it was the first ironclad proof of the US using its agencies to gather information in the country. “Every time Morales speaks on US-Bolivian relations in terms of US meddling in Bolivian affairs, he refers to this story, it’s the only story with definitive proof of spying,” said Friedman-Rudovsky. In the aftermath, the Bolivian foreign minister asked the US to establish exchange programs because the current US programs “are not transparent and we are suspicious when scholarship students are asked to spy on us”. The US did not comply.

Another controversy erupted in 2008 when a police unit called the Special Operations Command (COPES) was implicated in a domestic surveillance scandal after it was revealed that the unit had been used to collect intelligence on areas outside its remit of narco-trafficking. The unit was funded by the US, and was ultimately answerable to the US embassy. The idea that no one there knew what was going on is hard to countenance. It was disbanded soon after.

There had been a long lineage for this kind of subterfuge. In 1997 testimony to Congress, James Milford, deputy administrator of the DEA, said: “The Intelligence and Special Operations Group (GIOE) is one of Bolivia’s most successful drug enforcement programs. It was developed four years ago as a result of cooperation between DEA and the Bolivian National Police [and was] responsible for handling sensitive intelligence and conducting the most important complex criminal investigations in Bolivia.”

The US had long-established law enforcement agencies in Bolivia operating under the guise of drug enforcement; these agencies could be used for different purposes, and no one could actually verify whether they were gathering intelligence. Later, President Morales alleged that the CIA had tried to infiltrate state-run oil firm YPFB through marketing director Rodrigo Carrasco, who had attended a number of “training courses” in the US, which involved intelligence, security and politics. Carrasco had been a member of COPES. In the aftermath, the US embassy still complained that the “threat to expel the CIA from Bolivia means that any one of us can be (mis)identified as a spy and kicked out should we do – or be falsely accused of doing – anything that displeases Evo”. Spying was definitely taking place on a large scale. All through the cables there are allusions to “sensitive reporting” which is a euphemism for spying. One cable noted that a MAS official whom “many political analysts” consider “a radical” is “railroading controversial legislative measures”, before adding: “Sensitive reporting indicates that Ramirez may be very vulnerable on corruption and human smuggling charges.”

Being a softy

When in Sucre, I talked to Enrique Cortes, a professor at one of the universities in the city and a specialist in US-Bolivian relations. “Bolivia is still dependent,” he said. “This position of dependency was from the beginnings of when the nation was created, we were always dependent on an international monetary system lately led by the US.” He added: “There was a triangular relationship between the state, oligarchs and transnational organizations and these oligarchs responded to international money. When they lose power they use force to stop history from developing. Within that fits Rózsa-Flores and the Pando massacre, and Leopoldo.” The move to democracy, he said, may not be permanent, and could be scuppered. “There was the fascist process, dictatorship, but it’s not over. With Carter began the phase of controllable democracies, but now we think a new phase has opened. And this new phase is characterized by vital resources, and wanting control over these vital resources. So that’s the central conflict with the US.” He thought that the US could still put a brake on the process initiated by MAS to greater independence. “A coup is not the only way to put brakes on this. History shows there are other strategies, such as penetrating the popular organizations, and social movements using agencies like USAID.” But coups have been the traditional US tactic in the country.

Declassified documents released in 2008 exposed US financial and political support for the military coup led by right-wing general Hugo Banzer in 1971, who ruled until 1978 (before making a comeback, democratically elected this time, from 1997 to 2001). The State Department at the time denied supporting the three-day coup that left 110 dead and hundreds more wounded. Banzer’s dictatorship was a nightmare for organized labor and anyone who disagreed with his restructuring of the economy in the interests of foreign capital. He arrested 14,000 Bolivians without due process, and 8,000 more were tortured. Some 200 people were thought to have disappeared. Banzer had been trained at the notorious School of the Americas in Panama (Fort Gulick) and at Fort Hood in Texas, before becoming a military attaché in Washington. The declassified documents show that the Nixon administration had signed off $410,000 to be made available for politicians and military officers willing to take out the left-leaning dictator Juan José Torres. At a meeting in July 1971, the 40 Committee – chaired by the then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and overseeing covert operations around the world – discussion focused on giving this money to opposition figures who, the understanding was, would undertake a coup. Under-Secretary of State Alexis Johnson said: “What we are actually organizing is a coup in itself, isn’t it?” The plan was approved and the same day that the coup began in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, a National Security Council staffer reported to Kissinger that the CIA had transferred money to two high-ranking members of the opposition.

A month earlier, Nixon and Kissinger had discussed the possibilities for dealing with the Bolivian leader who was leaning too far left.

Kissinger: We are having a major problem in Bolivia, too. And –

Nixon: I got that. Connally mentioned that. What do you want to do about that?

Kissinger: I’ve told [CIA Deputy Director of Plans, Thomas] Karamessines to crank up an operation, post-haste. Even the Ambassador there, who’s been a softy, is now saying that we must start playing with the military there or the thing is going to go down the drain.

Nixon: Yeah.

Kissinger: That’s due in on Monday.

Nixon: What does Karamessines think we need? A coup?

Kissinger: We’ll see what we can, whether – in what context. They’re going to squeeze us out in another two months. They’ve already gotten rid of the Peace Corps, which is an asset, but now they want to get rid of [US Information Agency] and military people. And I don’t know whether we can even think of a coup, but we have to find out what the lay of the land is there.

Fast-forward 40 years and not much had changed. The WikiLeaks cables reveal that as the political turmoil was peaking, the US embassy was contemplating the eventuality of a military coup. One noted that “there are strong indications the military is split and could be reticent to follow orders”. Another complained that: “A strong commitment to institutionalism would require a rock-solid constitutional argument before commanders would participate in any action that could be considered ‘political’.” There is no doubt that these feelings were being communicated from within the military to the US embassy. “[Armed Forces Commander General Wilfredo] Vargas had been, publicly and privately, a supporter of US-Bolivian military relations,” one cable noted. “Although he continues to cooperate enthusiastically with us at a working level, even giving awards to three [Military Group] officers December 13 his public comments in the last few months have irritated Bolivian military officers and raised eyebrows within the Embassy.” (The Military Group is part of the US Department of Defense.) But there were reasons for optimism. “Evo does not have a network of personal friends within the military (although his Presidency Minister Juan Quintana does),” one cable noted. “[T]he military is leery of taking on any role considered remotely political. The military fears above all a repeat of the bloody military- civilian conflicts in El Alto in 2003, which brought down the Goni government.” The Goni government – supported by the US, where he is now in exile.

Finally, we are told that Commander Vargas is too unreliable to count on. “Vargas remains an enigma,” the cable noted. “Some commanders suspected, at least before his December 8 comments, that he might be sympathetic to a coup. He is widely characterized as an ‘opportunist’”. The cable added wryly: “We cannot expect him to stand behind his assurances.”

In a piece of bare-faced historical revisionism, USAID said that between 1985 and 2003 “fundamental economic and political rules of the game were liberalized”, adding, “organizations with a pluralistic view of democracy grew and flourished – especially in response to the availability of donor assistance”. It noted that, “Corporatist civil society organizations dominated citizen participation in the public sphere between 1952 and 1985”, which was the moment when the Bolivian government “began to change the direction of Bolivia’s economic policies and democratic practices”. Soon, as the fairytale went, “Pluralistic civil society then emerged, and was active – especially at the level of communities.” What that period, in fact, describes is the “Shock Doctrining” of the Bolivian economy and wider society. President Víctor Paz Estenssoro, who had been a supporter of US- backed dictator Hugo Banzer, ruled from 1985 to 1989 and instituted a neoliberal recipe to help put the staggering economy back on its feet. He repressed labor unions, sacked 30,000 miners, and privatized most of the state-owned companies. The broken society he and his successor Goni created would provide fertile ground for the Morales administration to grow in.

As its framework for the definition of civil society, USAID uses the work of Larry Diamond, a professor at Stanford University and fellow at the Hoover Institution where he coordinates the project on Democracy in Iran. He was a senior advisor on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and the founding co-editor of the National Endowment for Democracy’s Journal of Democracy. He has worked for the State Department, World Bank and USAID. In other words, the perfect intellectual to design democracy in Bolivia.

US weapons and military had been found in Bolivia. In June 2007, Donna Thi Dinh, a 20-year-old American woman, was detained at La Paz airport after arriving on a flight from Miami. The authorities found 500 rounds of .45-caliber ammunition in her luggage. Ms Thi had initially claimed to customs that she was carrying cheese. She was met at the airport by the wife of a military liaison at the US embassy in La Paz. US ambassador Philip Goldberg said that the bullets were for training and sport shooting and she did not realize that she had to declare them. This might be true, but at the very least it shows the impunity with which Americans felt they could act in Bolivia. Bolivia’s director of migration, Magaly Zegarra, noted: “the fact that a North American citizen, related to the embassy, is carrying ammunition on a North American aircraft coming from Miami, a city where terrorists from all over Latin America are protected by the government, especially their teacher, as [Luis] Posada is called by the terrorists, and make a mockery of all [justice] mechanisms, is questionable.” In another incident, in March 2006, Triston Jay Amero, a 25-year-old from California, set off 300 kilos of dynamite at two hotels in La Paz. He was carrying 15 different identity documents. Two years later, security services uncovered the presence of two fake American journalists photographing presidential vehicles.

The US military itself was also using Bolivia as a base. In June 2010, it was revealed that the Obama administration was expanding the role of US special operations forces around the world in a “secret war” to combat al-Qaeda, with the Washington Post noting that they were placed in 60 to 75 countries, with about 4,000 personnel available in countries aside from Iraq and Afghanistan. Jeremy Scahill reported in The Nation, based on “well-placed special operations sources”, that Bolivia was one of those countries. The role of the joint special operations command forces was to launch “pre-emptive or retaliatory strikes”, but this was ambiguous. “While some of the special forces missions are centered around training of allied forces, often that line is blurred. In some cases, ‘training’ is used as a cover for unilateral, direct action,” Scahill wrote. A special forces source told him: “It’s often done under the auspices of training so that they can go anywhere. It’s brilliant. It is essentially what we did in the 60s,” adding, “Remember the ‘training mission’ in Vietnam? That’s how it morphs.” US armed forces did occasionally pop up in Bolivia. In 2008, just weeks before the raid on Hotel Las Americas, Iraq war veteran Lieutenant Commander Gregory Michel was arrested after he pulled a gun on a prostitute in Santa Cruz. The US embassy managed to secure his release on grounds of “diplomatic immunity”. The WikiLeaks cables also show that C-130s and helicopters owned by the Narcotics Affairs Section (NAS) at the US Embassy were being used to transport “eradicators and troops”. Elsewhere, the embassy noted allegations that the DEA, US military and Bolivian national police headed Bolivian anti-narcotics efforts “from a US military base” in the Cochabamba department. In reference to this, the cable noted: “The US supports Bolivian anti-narcotics efforts at the Chimore Airport and has offices there, but there are no US military bases per se in Bolivia.” Per se. The WikiLeaks cables reveal an embassy concerned about renewing “mil- mil” (military to military) cooperation and establishing a “Status of Forces” agreement. But the Bolivian government was reticent about signing up – also refusing to ratify an “Article 98” which excuses US nationals from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, a common demand made by the US, a rogue nation intent on not abiding by international law.

But, as the US knows, Bolivia is still captive to the American military. A cable noted: “Bolivia has not spent any money on ammunition in two years, and the capacity to quickly move troops remains in doubt.”

Saying thank you

In early 2006, a cable from La Paz noted “the billions of US dollars of assistance in the past few decades”, and said that the ambassador observed that the US government “would sometimes appreciate a good word or thanks” from President Morales. To this day, the Morales government and his party, MAS, have not “thanked” the US for its support, because since 2005, and before, that support has been designed to finish them, and by extension democracy, in Bolivia. In many ways, Bolivia is the most democratic country in the world now. When you walk around the country you sense the involvement of the citizenry in the politics of their local community as well as on a national level, in a way that is markedly absent in the US or UK. There is a simple formula for US foreign policy in Latin America and beyond: support democracy if the people vote the right way. If they don’t, and the political party threatens to upset the “natural” order of things and with it the business interests of America and other foreign companies, then a program of subversion and destabilization gets under way. This investigation is focused on Bolivia in the specifics, but the general patterns have been replicated from Venezuela to Ecuador, from Brazil to Peru.

Another cable noted: “Evo Morales’ election in December 2005 was a political earthquake in Bolivia, sweeping aside political expectations that have defined Bolivian politics for generations and at the same time breaking open fissures and offering up new possibilities.” It is these new possibilities that scare the US government, the threat of the “virus of a good example”, a government that can provide for its citizens while growing the economy. Even Bolivia’s admirable lead on climate change is dismissed by the US embassy as a “vehicle for raising [Morales’s] and Bolivia’s international political stature”. The US is slowly losing the ownership it has had over Bolivian society for decades. For the first time

in living memory, the Bolivian people are deciding their own destiny according to their needs, ideas and hopes – not those of the US. For this reason, war has been declared on Bolivian democracy, alongside any other democracy that does not see its raison d’être as supporting US interests to the detriment of its own people. But it was not just the indigenous people of Latin America who were proving a problem for the racketeers. When the financial crisis hit, its own indigenous population stopped being so easy to exploit as well. The racket abroad meets the racket at home.v