Bolivian Army Declares Defense of the Environment Its Priority

Bolivian Army Declares Defense of the Environment Its Priority

In another stunning rebuke to the United States and its corporate dominated government, the Bolivian Army, which once had stalked and eventually executed Che Guevara, last week announced that it has become a socialist institution in order to protect the country against U.S. economic, environmental and military imperialism.

Standing before Bolivian President Evo Morales during the bicentennial celebration of the establishment of the army, Commanding General Antonio Cueto told the gathering that the military “has declared itself anti-capitalist, because the capitalist system is destroying Mother Earth”. He alluded to Morales’ international conference on global warming in La Paz of nations fed up with the stalling of the developed nations, particularly their deception at the Copenhagen conference which scuttled any hope of a treaty. General Cueto called for a unification of all efforts to defend the environment.

How can such a small, economically insignificant country get it so right? Perhaps, it is because the people control the state, not wealthy corporations. If this is what 21st Century socialism looks like; I, for one, will give it another look. Can you imagine what a saving impact on global warming and the planet’s fragile environment there would be if the United States used its vast armed forces to “defend the environment” rather than bomb, kill and maim Iraqis and Afghanis.

It is indeed ironic that one of the last acts by the United States’ CIA and drug enforcement agents before the newly elected people’s candidate, Morales, took office was to strip the Bolivian army of its entire missile arsenal and ship them off to the United States.

General Cueto told the crowd that Bolivia would join with other South American nations, except Columbia, to declare that they “will not permit the installation of military bases on its territory by any foreign powers.”

President Morales had lashed out against US expansionism earlier in the week by calling Columbia a “U.S. Colony” and suggesting these “lackeys of imperialism” were allowing U.S. bases into the nation to destabilize the region. He said the U.S.’s push into Columbia was to “provoke confrontation and war with neighboring countries such as Venezuela and Nicaragua.”

Morales has taken over environmental leadership of the exciting new union forming in South America, called the Boliviarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), which, along with Bolivia, includes Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Cuba and Dominica. ALBA astonishingly, in a corporate driven world which sees natural resources as a commodity to be plundered, has a functioning Ministerial Committee for the Defense of Nature. Finally, Mother Nature’s sons and daughters have come home to defend the planethood.

Their bold defense manifesto which emerged from the early November gathering in La Paz, Bolivia clearly declared that “nature has no price.” The delegates censured the United Nations for going along with the market based deceptions of “green economics” and “a Global Green New Deal” pushed by the U.S. and other so-called developed nations.

The nature defense committee absolutely rejected the “privatization, monetization and mercantilization of nature” as unsustainable models of growth. Decrying the neo-liberal, corporate mantra of privatization, the conference declared “it is essential to recognize that these [natural resources] have a collective character, and, as such, should be conserved as public goods, respecting the sovereignty of states.”

Looking ahead to yet another global warming conference and fearful that the U.S. and its economic conspirators will once again subvert global warming mitigation efforts the nature defense committee warned “Cancun cannot be another Copenhagen; we hope that accords will be reached in which developed countries truly act according to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, and effectively assume their obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, without making climate change into a business through the promotion and creation of carbon market mechanisms.”

Appealing to the citizens of the world, whose governments are captive of power corporations, the committee reminded us “only a humanity that is conscious of its present and future responsibilities and states with the political will to carry out their role, can change the course of history and restore equilibrium in nature and life as a whole.”