from Weekly News Update on the Americas

CESAR: PARAMILITARIES MASSACRE 22

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

On Dec. 23, with 99.7% of the votes counted from the Dec. 18 general elections, Bolivia's National Electoral Court (CNE) announced that Evo Morales Ayma of the Movement to Socialism (MAS) had won the presidency with nearly 54% of the valid votes cast. Morales got more than 1.5 million votes; turnout was an unprecedented 84.52% of the country's 3,670,971 registered voters. He will be inaugurated on Jan. 22 for a five-year term, taking over from interim president Eduardo Rodriguez Veltze, the former Supreme Court president who became president of Bolivia last June 9 after popular protests forced out the previous president, Carlos Mesa Gisbert.

by Kathryn Ledebur and Julia Dietz

Over two years have passed since Bolivian security forces killed 59 and left over 200 people seriously injured during widespread demonstrations protesting the management of Bolivia's gas reserves in September and October of 2003. As in other social conflicts in Bolivia, there have not been legal consequences for the human rights violations committed during the "Gas War."

By the time President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada resigned, the armed forces and police had killed almost as many people during his fourteen-month presidency as during the seven years of the Hugo Banzer dictatorship (1971-1978), considered one of Bolivia's bloodiest military governments since the 1952 revolution. The military's systematic refusal to cooperate in a meaningful way with investigations—although ordered to do so by the Bolivian Supreme court—and the delay of the United States government to deliver subpoenas to Sánchez de Lozada and two former cabinet ministers living in the U.S. have impeded attempts to seek justice for the victims and stem future human rights violations in a politically tenuous climate.

Part Three in a Troubling Series

by Michael I. Niman

Remember Fallujah? It's the Iraqi city of 300,000 that we had to destroy in order to save back in April of 2004. Over 30 Americans died and over 400 American troops were wounded and airlifted away. And at least 1,200 Iraqis were killed. A Red Cross official reported that American forces used cluster bombs and chemical phosphorous weapons inside the city. The target of the U.S. assault, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, along with up to 80 percent of his fighters, managed to slip out of town, leaving the Fallujans to catch the brunt of the American attack. In the end, some 10,000 homes in the city were completely leveled, and an estimated 150,000 residents displaced.

An Interview with Gilbert Achcar

by Bill Weinberg

Gilbert Achcar is the author of The Clash of Barbarisms: September 11 and the Making of the New World Disorder (Monthly Review Press, 2002) and Eastern Cauldron: Islam, Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq in a Marxist Mirror (Monthly Review Press, 2004). A native of Lebanon, he teaches international relations at the University of Paris, and is a frequent contributor to Le Monde diplomatique. On Nov. 3, he spoke in New York City at an event organized by the Campaign for Peace and Democracy entitled "The Case For Immediate Withdrawal: Wrestling with the Hard Questions." The following day, he spoke with WW4 REPORT's Bill Weinberg at his apartment in Lower Manhattan.

Dear WW4 REPORT Readers:

This issue marks a fourth year of bringing you cutting-edge reports from the global fronts in the War on Terrorism, as well as reviews, digests and analysis—providing news and perspectives available nowhere else. Among the stories you've received from us this year are:

*Raven Healing's dissection of the role played by oil pipeline schemes in Ukrainia's "Orange Revolution."

*Virginia McGlone's in-depth reportage on the horrific massacre at the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado, Colombia; and Daniel Leal's investigation of US chemical warfare in the Colombian rainforest.

Reality, Perception and the Iranian Revolution

BOOK REVIEW

FOUCAULT AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION
Gender and the Seductions of Islamism
by Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson
University of Chicago, 2005

by Sandy McCroskey

I.

When Michel Foucault arrived in Iran in September 1978 to begin what turned out to be a short-lived second career as a journalist, an earthquake had just obliterated forty villages. "Ten years ago to the day," Foucault tells us, a quake destroyed the town of Ferdows in the same area. In its place arose two new towns.

"On one side, there was the town of administration, the Ministry of Housing, and the notables. But a little further away, the artisans and the farmers rebuilt their own town, in opposition to all these official plans. Under the direction of a cleric, they collected the funds, built and dug with their own hands, laid out canals and wells, and constructed a mosque. On the first day they planted a green flag. The new village is called Islamiyeh. Facing the government and against it, Islam: already ten years old."

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

COSTA RICA: MARCH AGAINST DR-CAFTA