tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93320912010-03-15T09:10:41.273-04:00The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.comBlogger674125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-30133231540511780322010-03-11T13:46:00.006-04:002010-03-11T20:23:35.326-04:00

Here is my nightmare, and it should be the nightmare of everyone of my generation.It's two decades from now and my life is approaching an end. The realities of global climate change are no longer debated. They are clear, enormous, and worsening with great speed. Draught and rising seas are converting millions into climate refugees. Whole regions lack basic access to water and others are battered

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-87568863686203784202010-03-03T01:17:00.009-04:002010-03-03T01:39:49.900-04:00

The beginning of March in Bolivia. Some things just come around as predictable as the seasons.The hills of Cochabamba have turned a lush green from the late summer rains. I can walk safely down the street again without fear of the water balloons of Carnival coming down upon my targeted gringo head. And the governments of Bolivia and the U.S. are launching broadsides against one another over the

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com52tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-42326321899437903542010-02-25T11:12:00.003-04:002010-02-25T11:16:36.250-04:00

Readers:I am back from my work in humid Bangkok and back to a welcome downpour of rain in Cochabamba. We haven’t forgotten you and the Democracy Center team is madly at work on a host of projects coming up shortly on the Blog. Here’s a preview:Elections Once More!Next April Bolivians head back to the polls yet again, this time to elect Mayors and Governors across the country. What’s at stake? Who

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-82326537867096757142010-02-05T22:33:00.005-04:002010-02-07T01:01:02.718-04:00

I'm on the loose. I'm away. I'm out. I'm on the lamb, Manfred-style but without a warrant chasing me. But please don't tell anyone my location. Top secret.On the one hand, farther away from Bolivia I could not be. My daughter and I examined the globe together before I left three weeks ago, one of those older globes where Germany is still two countries and the Soviet Union just one. Thailand is on

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-16580282700297270362010-01-29T22:21:00.003-04:002010-01-29T22:36:51.811-04:00

Readers,A week ago Bolivian President Evo Morales was sworn in to his historic second term of office – historic both because of the margin of his December election victory (63%) and the constitutional change that for the first time in decades allows a president to serve a second consecutive term. To mark the occasion and spark the debate that this event surely does, we bring you an extended Blog

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com50tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-62721231538409455072010-01-24T19:41:00.002-04:002010-01-24T19:50:24.498-04:00

Readers:Different countries have different protocols as to what happens to candidates who lose their nation's Presidential elections. In the U.S. Al Gore wrote a book, made a movie and won both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar. John McCain returned to the Senate and became one of the opposition's leading voices.Bolivia is different than the U.S. in many respects and here again that's true. Manfred

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com61tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-35215384701104820802010-01-20T14:42:00.002-04:002010-01-20T14:53:07.392-04:00

Readers:There is not story in Bolivia this week, or anywhere in Latin America, that is more urgent than the devastating earthquake in Haiti and its aftermath. With deaths measured in the tens of thousands and individual stories of terror, pain and suffering greater than any most of us could even conjure, Haiti is home to one of the largest single tragedies that most of us will see in our

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-25417057318252113632010-01-13T00:42:00.004-04:002010-01-13T00:58:49.271-04:00

Dear Readers:You can breath easy again. The Democracy Center team is springing back into Blog mode after a well-deserved break for the holidays and the New Year. Here is a preview of some of the stories and events from Bolivia that are making news and that you can expect to see us writing about in the weeks to come.Manfred on the Run in the USADifferent countries have different protocols for

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-35892615318135180112010-01-04T13:36:00.002-04:002010-01-04T13:39:22.127-04:00

Readers:For many years the Democracy Center has joined with those fighting to protect natural resources and the environmental against takeover efforts by international corporations. This included our work in the campaign against Bechtel's post-Water Revolt case against the people of Cochabamba. More recently we have joined with other organizations across the Americas to build a new project to

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-85055972412180183042009-12-24T14:11:00.002-04:002009-12-24T14:17:32.139-04:00

Dear Readers,On behalf of everyone here at the Democracy Center, we wish you, your families, your loved ones, your pets and anyone else you care to celebrate with – a very happy holiday, whichever you one you celebrate this time of year.So, if Jesus is your deal, Merry Christmas!If the festival of lights is more your gig, Happy Hanukkah!If a black nationalist holiday is more to your liking, Feliz

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-9946988851436703552009-12-19T12:30:00.008-04:002009-12-19T13:51:48.336-04:00

"I am the spokesman for the indigenous and peasant peoples who live in harmony with Mother Earth.”-- Bolivian President Evo MoralesMany environmentalists were no doubt thrilled and inspired this week by the declarations of Bolivia's President at the Copenhagen summit. Amidst diplomatic dithering by the world's wealthy nations over doing anything real about the global climate change their people's

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-4971432573240888382009-12-11T17:39:00.003-04:002009-12-12T13:47:50.206-04:00

Dear ReadersThis week in Copenhagen representatives from 192 nations have gathered to discuss the future of our small and imperiled planet.The crisis of global climate change lingers over most of us in gauzy and unseen ways that make it easy to still ignore. Easy for us to still live in ways that turn up our planet’s temperature more each year. Easy for us to let our governments act as if

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-29019100231222652272009-12-06T11:00:00.010-04:002009-12-06T23:38:42.079-04:00

Readers: It has been quite a day in Bolivia. In a vote with few glitches, Bolivians went to the polls today in huge numbers and gave President Evo Morales a huge victory. Morales won more than 62% of the popular vote, beating his nearest opponent, former Cochabamba Governor Manfred Reyes by more than 2 to 1.It is a huge mandate by any conceivable measure. To put this in perspective, for more than

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-42798202164969966272009-11-30T17:10:00.017-04:002009-12-04T08:40:34.736-04:00

Readers:As promised, we have just posted a new video featuring interviews with the National Senate candidates from Cochabamba from the two leading political parties in Sunday's vote, Evo Morales' MAS party and Manfred Reyes Villa's Plan Progreso para Bolivia-Concertación Nacional.Subtitled in English, this offers you the chance to hear directly from those on Sunday's ballot. The video, which took

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com63tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-55635863600977510802009-11-24T12:33:00.007-04:002009-11-24T23:54:30.608-04:00

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published another opinion piece on Bolivia from its columnist Mary O’Grady. I really wasn’t going to write anything about the column because, frankly, I (and most of the journalists I know) don’t take Ms. O’Grady’s writing all that seriously. But since a number of readers have specifically written to me and asked me to write something about the article, here

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com52tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-91517365205771347772009-11-15T21:35:00.003-04:002009-11-15T21:41:34.867-04:00

Dear Readers:I am a citizen of the United States. For that reason I am, like many millions of others, paying close attention to the deliberations of the Obama administration over how the U.S. will proceed in its nine-year-long war in Afghanistan.I do not pretend to be an expert on this issue. While I have had a chance in recent years to speak with a number of journalists and others who have

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-16580651062495564022009-11-11T10:38:00.001-04:002009-11-11T10:41:21.799-04:00

Dear Readers:Today we bring you a special edition of the Blog which took a good deal of work, by a team of people, to produce.A decade ago the streets of Cochabamba were made known worldwide when the people of this city came out by the thousands to take back their public water system from Bechtel in the now-famous Cochabamba Water Revolt. In the days of that revolt and in the ten years since the

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-21787783936200267852009-11-08T09:00:00.003-04:002009-11-08T10:37:09.874-04:00

Dear Readers:Today we bring you our second installment of our Blog series on the Bolivian Presidential vote. Last time we looked at some of the peculiarities of the vote and the politics surrounding it. In this post we look at the major candidates on the ballot in the December 6th election.We will be back again shortly with a look at the major issues in the race. This article was written with

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-19007872415233268672009-11-04T06:30:00.001-04:002009-11-04T07:33:07.089-04:00

Those of you have who have been followers of the Democracy Center's work for any length of time remember the campaign that we and our allies waged for years against the Bechtel Corporation, when it sued the people of Cochabamba for $50 million in the aftermath of the Water Revolt. That case was filed before ICSID, the secretive trade court operated by the World Bank. Thanks to pressure from

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-3937091308399036352009-10-30T03:00:00.001-04:002009-10-30T07:59:02.302-04:00

Dear Readers:Welcome to the start of the Democracy Center’s Blog coverage of the December 6th Bolivian Presidential and Congressional election!In the weeks ahead we will be publishing a series of posts looking at various aspects of the December vote and in many different forms, including analyses of the issues, video interviews with candidates running with the major parties, views from social

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-81602295289259130102009-10-28T09:26:00.006-04:002009-10-28T09:35:30.468-04:00

Readers:From time to time we like to draw your attention to solid pieces written about Bolivia by some of our friends and colleagues. The new article by Linda Farthing on Bolivia's environmental challenges is an important read. For those of you who don't know Linda, she has lived in Bolivia for many years and is co-author, with Ben Kohl, of one of the better recent books on Bolivia, Impasse in

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-81432775609827257452009-10-22T23:50:00.001-04:002009-10-22T23:50:34.669-04:00

On Friday, at a ceremony in Paris, the Democracy Center will be named by Politics Online as one of the Top Ten Groups in the World Changing the Internet and Politics. Our company in that top ten includes Google, a prominent Middle East human rights organization and others. The award to the Democracy Center is based on more than a decade of work pioneering the use of the Internet for social

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-45416826054626807042009-10-20T23:14:00.003-04:002009-10-20T23:24:08.444-04:00

Readers:Last weekend the normally quiet city of Cochabamba was transformed into ground zero for a Latin American Presidents Summit. Seven heads of state were on hand, as well as scores of diplomats and hundreds of representatives from social organizations across the Americas, for a meeting of Latin America's left – ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the People).The summit included Presidential

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-89707091214349285382009-10-16T12:11:00.004-04:002009-10-16T13:01:35.347-04:00

Presidents, Presidents everywhere and not a juice to drink.The Presidents of Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua are all headed into Cochabamba this afternoon, along with a host of other diplomats from Latin America’s left, for a two-day summit of the Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos (ALBA). We have a team covering it and will have more news about the politics of the summit coming soon.But first

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9332091.post-65435536420643302812009-10-10T10:39:00.002-04:002009-10-10T10:43:36.669-04:00

Okay readers, here is a little experiment to see which of you has been paying most attention to news events in Bolivia over the past week.Below is a set of questions. Try your luck! We look forward to your answers in the comments section below and we will post the correct answers here next week.1. Which leading candidate for the Presidency of Bolivia this past week declared his intention to shut

The Democracy Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012139731455088911noreply@blogger.com17