Click on the images to go to the slideshow
I spent Halloween afternoon in Huanuni, Bolivia, where the government was to announce the nationalisation of the the country’s mines. Instead, they announced that they were going to postpone the nationalisation and give salaried jobs to all the 4000 private miners in Huanuni.
Naturally, this made everyone [...]
Posts under ‘news’
Trick or Treat? Nationalisation next year: Look - a parade!
Pulacayo: The ghosts of mining past
Click on the picture to go to the full slideshow
3 days in the town of Pulacayo, a UNESCO industrial world heritage site. Once one of the most properous towns in Bolivia thanks to its rich mines, Pulacayo’s formerly proud buildings are decayed and people have mostly abandoned the town. Those who stay depair at a [...]
MAS talk, less walk: the politics of rhetoric in Bolivia
The other night I met Sam, a Bolivian who runs an internet service out of a simple room in back streets of La Paz. In his early 30s, he spent 10 years in New York before coming back here to start his own business last year. “Now”, he says, “I wish I could return”. Sam [...]
La Paz shuts down for a day, gets a whole lot nicer
A blockade of Bolivia’s default capital La Paz yesterday turned the usually pollution-infected streets into sunny pedestrian malls. The cause - transport workers protesting against the local municipality. A good enough excuse for the rest of us who enjoyed the sunshine and peace and quiet.
Most of the transport workers weren’t complaining either. These two [...]
Extraordinary Rendition
Outlawed: A short documentary by the human rights group WITNESS relating two first hand experiences of extraordinary rendition. One german citizen was held for 5 months in Morocco and then transfered and released on the border of Albania in the middle of the night. Another British citizen was held and tortured in several countries for [...]
Friday news round-up (slow news day)
Where would we be without a healthy dose of news to whittle away the hours. Pilger starts us off with a comment on slow news.
He writes: “Regular news: “We have been making real progress in areas where the insurgency has been strongest,” says a U.S. military spokesman in Iraq. Slow news: The U.S. [...]
Sunday Round-up
The War on Terror appears to be going well: On Friday (slow news day) the pentagon released a report desribing growing sectarian violence is making Iraq decend further into civil war. But Bush tells us not to worry - its all rosy!
Meanwhile, the opium growers in Afganistan have a bumper year. This NY [...]