Voters Reject Traditional Parties in Elections Marred by Violence

by April Howard, Toward Freedom

A soldier running from angry protesters died instantly when he fell off of a cliff, town offices were burned down, and one mayor escaped to Lima, claiming that his constituency was planning to lynch him. In spite of the Organization of American States' report of a normal election, Peruvian President Alan García called on the armed forces to quell violence across the country during and after regional elections held November 19, 2006.

Though García was re-elected as president representing one of the country's oldest and most institutionalized political parties just six months before, these regional elections showed a widespread rejection of such parties, and favor for "independent" parties. The election results challenge García's second presidency and demonstrate the deep social, economic and political divides that continue to run through present-day Peru.

Campesinos Mobilize for Agrarian Reform

by Benjamin Dangl, Toward Freedom

Silvestre Saisari, a bearded, soft-spoken leader in the Bolivian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), sat in his office in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The building was surrounded by a high cement wall topped with barbed wire. It looked like a military bunker. This made sense given the treatment Saisairi and other like-minded social and labor organizers received from the city's right-wing elite. In 2005, the young MST leader was attacked while giving a press conference on landowners' use of armed thugs to suppress landless farmers. To prevent him from denouncing these acts to the media, people reportedly tied to landowners pulled his hair, strangled, punched, and beat him. Sitting in his well-protected headquarters, Saisari explained, "Land is a center of power. He who has land, has power... We are proposing than this land be redistributed, so their [elites] power will be affected."

What is Behind Bush's Andean "Anti-Terrorist" Strategy?

by Julian Monroy, WW4 REPORT


Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe Velez—the Bush administration's main ally in the hemispheric war on terrorism and drugs, as well as in the pursuit of free trade policies—was in Washington DC on November 13-4 to meet key legislators. His agenda was to secure continued military aid and the extension of the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA), which was to expire at the end of 2006.

His visit took place in the midst of a huge scandal without precedent in Colombia. On November 8, the Criminal Division of the Supreme Court of Justice ordered the capture of Senator Alvaro Garcia Romero and Representative Elkin Morris from the Colombia Democratica Party and Senator Jorge Merlano from Uribe's Partido de la U (for "unity"). All of them are government bigwigs and close friends of the Colombian president.

State Terror and the Struggle for Ecopetrol

by Bill Weinberg, WW4 REPORT

Ijaw Militia Fight the Oil Cartel

by Ike Okonta

"They have taken crafty counsel against thy people; and consulted against thy hidden ones. They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation."

—Oboko Bello, president of Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities (FNDIC), quoting Psalm 83:1-5.

"Green Energy" Panacea or Just the Latest Hype?

by Brian Tokar, WW4 REPORT

You can hardly open up a major newspaper or national magazine these days without encountering the latest hype about biofuels, and how they're going to save oil, reduce pollution and prevent climate change. Bill Gates, Sun Microsystems' Vinod Khosla, and other major venture capitalists are investing millions in new biofuel production, whether in the form of ethanol, mainly derived from corn in the US today; or biodiesel, mainly from soybeans and canola seed. It's virtually a "modern day gold rush," as described by the New York Times, paraphrasing the chief executive of Cargill, one of the main benefactors of increased subsidies to agribusiness and tax credits to refiners for the purpose of encouraging biofuel production.

Rafael Correa and the Popular Movements

by Yeidy Rosa, WW4 REPORT

When Alvaro Noboa, Ecuador's richest man, won enough votes during the October 15 first round of the presidential election to advance into the final runoff on November 26, rural and urban social movements throughout the Andean nation mobilized in a campaign against him. The prospect of the presidency falling into the hands of the Bonita banana magnate, notorious for the violent repression of workers' attempts to unionize and even for the use of child labor on his plantations, sparked a nationwide mobilization by indigenous, environmental, youth, anti-militarist, and other social justice groups—not necessarily out of a belief in electoral politics, but in repudiation of Noboa's neoliberal platform plans to establish free trade agreements with the United States.

A Model for the Korean Peninsula?

by Rene Wadlow, Toward Freedom

With a political sky darkened by the nuclear weapon test of North Korea and the growing tensions over the nuclear program of Iran, a ray of sunlight comes from Central Asia. On September 8, 2006, the five states of Central Asia—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan—signed the treaty establishing a nuclear-weapon free zone which can serve as a model for a nuclear-weapon free Korean Peninsula. The treaty aims at reducing the risk of nuclear proliferation and nuclear-armed terrorism. The treaty bans the production, acquisition, deployment of nuclear weapons and their components as well as nuclear explosives. Importantly, the treaty bans the hosting or transport of nuclear weapons as both Russia and the USA have established military airbases in Central Asia where nuclear weapons could have been placed in times of crisis in Asia.