latin american politics redux. i remember how laurel and i would walk home from ken sharpe's interminably long and ridiculously engaging lap class during sophomore spring, so angry at american politics in latin america that we were practically shooting sparks. we conducted dangerous charges down the hill to willets, blowing off that day's dose of republican idiocy by mutually reinforcing the inflammatory things we were learning, often at the top of our lungs...which i now realize must have been a rather terrifying sight.

in any case. the story linked above is a sad and rather common one -- the bolivian president, caught between a rock (stupid inflexible cheapskate dipshit republican administration demanding coca eradication) and a very hard place (well-organized and increasingly radical coca growers). he begged the bush administration for more money to support alternative means of development while coca growers' livelihoods were destroyed. the bush administration refused. the economic crisis in bolivia grew. now the president has been deposed.

voila! another republican administration has successfully radicalized another latin american country through its hamfisted, ill-considered, selfish plans. i wonder how many times the US can afford to pull this kind of shit.