By: Daniel Nardini
It seems to have become fashionable among wacky leftist governments to accuse the United States of things that seem almost like bad scripts from the famous TV show “The X-Files.” The current Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has accused the U.S. government of having committed the “murder” of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez by somehow making him sick with cancer until it killed him. Then Maduro accused Washington, D.C., of “interference” in the questionable elections held last month that put Maduro into office. The U.S. government, along with many other governments and the Venezuelan opposition, has called the election for president less than transparent, and is calling for a new election.
Not to be out-done by Venezuela, current Bolivian President Evo Morales has expelled all personnel from the USAID government agency that tries to help the poor and needy in the United States and around the world. Morales has accused them of trying to “overthrow” the Bolivian government, and has cut all funding that USAID had given to hundreds of Bolivian communities to try and improve their situation. Among the accusations against USAID by Morales was providing funding and aid to lowland regional governments who were opposed to Morales (it never occurred to him that his own policies had set these regional governments against him), and trying to “interfere” with Bolivia’s coca production which Morales declared a “symbol of coca farmers’ self-sufficiency.”
It did not occur to Morales that an undisclosed amount of coca has also been processed into cocaine and distributed throughout South America and, yes, to the United States. But there is nothing the United States can do about it since the Bolivian government had kicked out all of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration personnel in 2009. Now Morales is kicking out those people who might help Bolivia fight poverty, disease and despair because they work for the “evil yankee government.” With Bolivia being one of the poorest countries in the Americas, this is only going to make the conditions of the Bolivian people that much more unbearable.
Bolivia’s USAID Moment
By: Daniel Nardini
Not to be out-done by Venezuela, current Bolivian President Evo Morales has expelled all personnel from the USAID government agency that tries to help the poor and needy in the United States and around the world. Morales has accused them of trying to “overthrow” the Bolivian government, and has cut all funding that USAID had given to hundreds of Bolivian communities to try and improve their situation. Among the accusations against USAID by Morales was providing funding and aid to lowland regional governments who were opposed to Morales (it never occurred to him that his own policies had set these regional governments against him), and trying to “interfere” with Bolivia’s coca production which Morales declared a “symbol of coca farmers’ self-sufficiency.”
It did not occur to Morales that an undisclosed amount of coca has also been processed into cocaine and distributed throughout South America and, yes, to the United States. But there is nothing the United States can do about it since the Bolivian government had kicked out all of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration personnel in 2009. Now Morales is kicking out those people who might help Bolivia fight poverty, disease and despair because they work for the “evil yankee government.” With Bolivia being one of the poorest countries in the Americas, this is only going to make the conditions of the Bolivian people that much more unbearable.