OK guys so this update really has two major parts.  As usual, I'm going to start it off with a plea for you to sign an apparently obscure petition.  Barbara Boxer is by far the most outspoken opponent of the bush administration in the senate and amazingly enough she has refused to budge or comprimise on her issues.  She has gotten quite a lot done.  A few weeks ago she started a petition that traveled through a lot of my email circles asking that president Bush withdraw his nomination of John Bolton to be US ambassidor to the United Nations.  At that point it was confidential and invite only, and to be completely honest I didn't see it going that far.  As of this morning the petition had over 73,000 signatures, and so it has been taken off of the email circuit and posted to the internet.  I know it may seem obscure, but this nomination simply embodies the ways in which the Bush administration is trying to distance itself from the international community.  John Bolton is in no way likely to be a useful ambassidor to the UN as he has been an outspoken opponent of the organization for his entire career.

• Bolton has cut funding to programs limiting and securing nuclear weapons and materials multiple times throughout his career
• Many of Bolton's problems in the Senate hearings stemmed from his effort to drum up a "Cuba has biological weapons" scare. He tried to fire two intelligence officers who had the temerity to disagree with him. Under oath, he denied trying to have the men fired, but seven intelligence officials contradicted him. In a typically intemperate statement, Bolton had dismissed the opinion of the chief bio-weapons analyst at State as that of "a mid-level munchkin."
• Bolton is also the man who pushed to have the fake claim about Saddam's supposed Niger uranium put into the president's 2003 State of the Union Address.
• Perhaps Bolton's most dangerous mischief was repeatedly withholding information from Secretary Colin Powell and at least once from Secretary Condoleezza Rice. The Washington Post broke that story, including Bolton's failure to advise Rice before her European trip on the unpopularity of Bolton's campaign to oust Mohammad El Baradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency at the United Nations. El Baradei had the gall to be right about WMDs in Iraq and is respected around the world.
• ewer weapons-grade nuclear materials were secured in the two years after 9/11 than in the two years before the attack. North Korea, which then had two nuclear weapons, now has as many as eight. After dealing with Bolton, the North Korean government called him "human scum" and "a bloodsucker," and declined to recognize him as an official of the United States.

Surely we can do better.  Surely we can find a nominee for UN Ambassador that America can support and get behind -- not someone who divides our country and alienates our allies.

Please stand with Barbara Boxer and me -- email President Bush and tell him to nominate a new UN Ambassador at the following link:

http://ga4.org/campaign/bolton

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Yeah, so that is my request for your activism for this entry.  Now I just have some news for you all from the Zapatistas in mexico... for those of you who don't know who they are they are the socialist rebils recognising some natives that the government of mexico states are "subcitizen" and refuses to recognise as part of its nation.

After a short shooting war in january of 1994, the Zapatistas fought, in a non-violent but sometimes spectacular fashion, for democracy, freedom, justice, ethnic minority rights, women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights, rights for transvestites, rights for transsexuals and the protection of the rain forest. For “a world in which all worlds can fit”. After long negotiations between the zapatista rebels and the federal government, a treaty of one of many zapatista demands, indigenous rights, was signed. The Zapatistas mobilised millions of people in Mexico and around the world in support of this treaty. However, the law that was passed in the Mexican parliament in august of 2001 was a completely altered version of the treaty. The Zapatistas felt betrayed and entered, once more, a period of silence. Periods of silence traditionally follow periods of public appearance of the Zapatistas. In these periods of silence they built the strength of their organisation and deliberate on their next strategic moves.

In silence the Zapatistas strengthened their autonomous organizations according to the agreements of the treaty that later was watered down by the government. By now there are approximately some hundreds of thousands of (mostly indigenous) zapatista support bases who are organized in thousands of autonomous rebel communities, some thirty autonomous municipalities and five overarching regions, who each have their representative councils. In these regions they built and organised, with financial aid of many NGO’s and private donators, hundreds of autonomous primary schools (for children who otherwise would not have acces to any form of education, most of the indigenous of Chiapas are illiterate), a couple of secondary schools, autonomous commercial cooperations, dozens of microclinics, a few larger hospitals, a few media collectives to, a few rebel radio stations and they trained many health promoters in an area where 55% of the people suffer from malnutrition and one in every foru infants dies of curable diseases like chronic diarrhea. But the most remarkable achievement of the movement is the creation of an highly developed, multi-level autonomous government.

The Mexican political system for decades has been characterized by widespread clientelism, in which local political bosses, caciques, are supported by national, dinosaur-like, parties and can do whatever they want in their territories, as long as they ensure support for this party throughout their territory. They traditionally use these powers for their own good and that of their allies. However, in the autonomous territories “the people command and the government obeys”. All major decisions in the communities are made after extensive deliberations in which all members have had the opportunity to speak. The translocal decisions are made by the communities. There is no such thing as a supralocal government. The elected Zapatista officials have to obey thes orders. When they use their position to do anything else than execute the instructions of the people, they will be removed from their positions. The Zapatistas have no illusions about the corrupting influence of power, nor should they after decades of caciquismo. The Zapatistas reject the notion of the necessity of a professional political class. They think the leadership will eventually act in its own interest, and not in that of the people. As a simbol, administrative officials all hide their faces behind ski masks or scars. This emphasizes the the unimportance of the leader as a person. He or she has to get the job done, and if they mess up, they are immediately replaced.

Sadly, the Zapatistas have gone into red alert, which means the leaders going into hiding and the shutdown of most government functions... we can only pray for their ability to carry on as they have for 12 years.

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