This time in the form of the Associated Press:
... Bolivian President Evo Morales has recently moved to improve his anti-American credentials, accusing the United States of helping to foment widespread and worsening political unrest in his country.
Yes, and clearly the only possible reason for these accusations is Morales' burning desire to "improve his anti-American credentials," and information like this has nothing to do with it whatsoever:
'The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is doing in Bolivia what it was doing in Venezuela...aiding the opposition,' said independent researcher and writer Jeremy Bigwood, who specialises in Latin American affairs.
For example, a July 2002 declassified message from the U.S. embassy in Bolivia to Washington said, 'A planned USAID political party reform project aims at implementing an existing Bolivian law that would...over the long run, help build moderate, pro-democracy political parties that can serve as a counterweight to the radical MAS [party of now President Evo Morales] or its successors.'
Bigwood has made several attempts to obtain detailed information about the nature of current U.S. spending in Bolivia, without success. He says he has filed five separate petitions under the Freedom of Information Act since 2005.
However, one FOIA request he filed revealed that the quasi-governmental National Endowment for Democracy had funded programmes that brought 13 young 'emerging leaders' from Bolivia to Washington between 2002 and 2004 to strengthen their right-wing political parties.
No, we can safely ignore information like this, as well as decades of well-documented, declassified history of US intervention in Latin America on behalf of right-wing dictators and their vicious death squads (like, say, the one that massacred at least 30 Bolivians last week). And luckily for us, the AP is more than willing to help us do it!
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