COSTCO REMOVING D'SOUZA'S 'AMERICA' FROM SHELVES

7/8/2014

Bestseller disappearing as companion movie hits theaters

President Obama visiting a Maryland Costco store in January 2014.

NEW YORK – The retail giant Costco Wholesale has issued an order to remove all copies of Dinesh D’Souza’s bestselling book, “America: Imagine the World Without Her,” from the shelves of its stores nationwide, WND has confirmed.

The book, in this midterm election year, is a strong rebuttal of the progressive ideology behind President Obama’s policies, which have been supported by Costco co-founder and director Jim Sinegal, a major Democrat donor and a speaker at the 2012 Democratic National Convention that nominated the president. A Washington Post political reporter has noted Obama’s “romance” with the nation’s second-largest retailer.

At Amazon.com, D’Souza’s book, released June 2, is ranked No. 5 overall and No. 1 in Political Commentary and Opinion.

UPDATE: Costco fires back after yanking ‘America’ off shelves

Copies of “America” at a Costco store Monday (WND photo)

Costco has sold more than 3,600 copies of “America” nationwide, with about 700 copies sold last week as D’Souza’s film by the same name opened at more than 1,000 movie theaters nationwide.

But Costco’s book department issued the “pull-order,” requiring all Costco stores nationwide to remove the book, confirmed Scott Losse, an inventory control specialist in the book department at the Costco Wholesale corporate office in Issaquah, Washington, a suburb of Seattle.

The July 1 order required all copies to be removed by July 15.

Contacted for a reaction, D’Souza was surprised to learn of the Costco decision.

“If true, this would be very odd,” D’Souza said.

“We’re in the process of finding out what’s happening. I look forward to getting to the bottom of this and continuing the strong relationship my publisher and I have always had with Costco and their millions of shoppers.”

Most Costco stores WND contacted Monday had already pulled “America” from the shelves, with others scheduled to remove it with their regularly scheduled inventory changes Tuesday or Wednesday this week.

A few Costco stores told inquirers Monday they were “in luck,” because a handful of books were still available and a few copies remained in the warehouse waiting to be returned. Staffers offered to put aside a book so it could be purchased before all copies were shipped back to the vendor.

WND contacted by telephone and email Costco’s national book-buyer, Pennie Clark Ianniciello, at Costco’s headquarters, but received no response to WND’s questions regarding why D’Souza’s book was being pulled from the shelves just as the companion movie was opening in theaters.

WND was unable to reach by phone or email Marji Ross, the president of Regnery, which published D’Souza’s book.

Missing from the New York Times list

Amazon readers have given “America” an average rating of 4.6 out of 5.

The Washington Examiner reported June 20 that the book sold 4,915 in the first week and 5,592 in the second week but mysteriously was kept off the New York Times bestseller list, where it would have ranked No. 8 and then No. 11 on the June 29 list.

D’Souza told the Examiner: “It’s their newspaper, and they have a right to rig their list anyway they want, but if they are doing it, people should know.”

He said the New York Times list is important to boosting sales.

“It matters to be on it,” he said.

The book will be on the Times July 13 list, however, at No. 17.

The movie “America,” which has been given a rare “A+” CinemaScore by audiences, opened in 1,105 theaters nationwide to roughly $4 million over the five-day July 4 holiday weekend.

It didn’t do as well as D’Souza’s 2012 breakout hit, “2016: Obama’s America,” which enjoyed a remarkable $6.5 million debut on its way to $33 million, but the November election between Obama and Republican Mitt Romney was clearly a factor, noted TheWrap, a website that covers Hollywood.

“We didn’t expect to open as well as that film for that reason,” co-director John Sullivan told TheWrap. “But the word of mouth on ‘America’ is tremendous, even better than on ’2016,’ and we think it’s going to build in the coming weeks.”

Sullivan commented that for a documentary “without Justin Bieber or animals in it, I think we did pretty darn well.”

Obama’s ‘romance’ with Costco

In January, Obama paid a visit to a Costco store in a Washington, D.C., suburb, “proving,” as Jaime Fuller of the Washington Post commented, “that his administration’s romance with the second-largest retailer in America is stronger than ever – and might just be the most successful union of a politician and a supermarket in American history.”

Costco co-founder Jim Sinegal

Sinegal spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2012, which nominated President Obama for a second term.

Sinegal, who retired as Costco CEO in January 2013, said Obama’s re-election would be better for businesses than a country led by Mitt Romney.

American companies, he said, need “a president who takes the long view and makes the tough decisions,” said Sinegal.

“That’s why I am here tonight supporting President Obama, a president making an economy built to last,” he said.

Fuller said that in the 2012 campaign, Costco played “an important role in countering Walmart’s support of Republican candidates and issues while also proving an easy way for Obama to mention income inequality and smart job creation on the campaign trail.”

In total, Costco has given $100,000 to Obama and another $100,000 to Priorities USA, the pro-Obama super PAC.

Sinegal was the author of an email blast sent out by the Obama campaign in July 2012. Obama also held a fundraiser at Sinegal’s house in Seattle, during which the incumbent president said “the story of Costco and everything that you guys have done I think is representative of what America is all about.”

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Shocking Revelation: Press "hostile to freedom," Conestoga Wood president says

7/8/2014

The news media "pushes an agenda hostile to freedom," Anthony Hahn, president and CEO of Conestoga Wood Specialties, said Monday in an interview with National Review Online, a conservative webzine.

"I learned that the media can blow things way out of proportion by not necessarily stating all the facts or not stating the facts correctly," Hahn said in an interview one week after the Supreme Court exempted his company from the government's contraception mandate.

In a 5-4 ruling, the Court said the Obama administration violated the Hahn family's religious rights when it threatened to fine the conservative Mennonite owners for not covering emergency contraceptives in their company health plan.

Contrary to medical research, Hahn and his family, who oppose abortion on religious grounds, believe drugs such as the morning-after pill can destroy human life.

In objecting to covering emergency contraception, Hahn denied Conestoga Wood was taking "anything away from the women in our work force."

"We have always provided a very generous health-benefits package and we continue to do so," he said. "Women had access to contraception before the mandate, and they still have public access to the same contraception. We simply do not want to pay for abortifacient items. Nothing changed other than that the government was asking us to give up our rights."

Hahn has declined interview requests by this newspaper and other news organizations.

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Well Deserved: Obama Presidential Library' Outhouse Angers His 5% Supporters, Race Cards Fly

7/8/2014

NORFOLK, Neb. — A float comparing President Barack Obama's future presidential library to an outhouse has drawn criticism from some after it appeared in the Fourth of July parade in Norfolk.

It featured a wooden outhouse labeled "Obama Presidential Library" and a figure in overalls standing outside the structure.

"I'm angry and I'm scared," Norfolk resident Glory Kathurima told the Lincoln Journal Star. "The float was not just political; this was absolutely a racial statement."

Kathurima, an immigrant from Kenya, is raising her 9-year-old daughter in the northeast Nebraska community of roughly 24,000.

Parade organizers with the local Odd Fellows lodge said the float was the most popular one in the event and received an honorable mention award.

Parade committee member Rick Konopasek said he didn't think the float was any more offensive than a political cartoon, and organizers didn't want to limit what they considered a political viewpoint.

"We don't feel it's right to tell someone what they can and can't express," he said to the Journal Star. "This was political satire. If we start saying no to certain floats, we might as well not have a parade at all."

Konopasek said most of the crowd enjoyed the float. "So should we deny the 95 percent of those that liked it their rights," he said, "just for the 5 percent of people who are upset?"

Norfolk City Councilman Dick Pfeil told the Omaha World-Herald that he was unhappy with the float, and he wanted to make clear the city had not approved it.

"The city of Norfolk doesn't condone that," Pfeil said.
Kathurima said she is having a hard time explaining the float to her daughter.

"My daughter keeps asking me, 'Why?' and I don't have an answer for her," she said. "We made this place our home, but right now it doesn't feel like it. It's shameful."

Parade organizers plan to meet within the next week to discuss the float and whether any policy changes should be made for the future.

Currently, the only restriction on parade floats is that morally objectionable entries won't be permitted. Konopasek said that generally translates into a ban on sexually explicit messages.

The Gazette ‏@csgazette

Obama float at Nebraska parade sparks controversy http://gazette.com/obama-float-at-nebraska-parade-sparks-controversy/article/1522519#WHJZ1DOs4wUqzMcM.99 … pic.twitter.com/DMIK0Gynak

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Meanwhile here's what Huffington Post is saying:

An Independence Day parade in Norfolk, Nebraska included a float depicting President Obama's presidential library as an outhouse, sparking outcry from residents as well as the state's Democratic Party.
The float, which did not identify its sponsor, featured an overall-clad dummy standing in front of an outhouse. Nailed to the structure were wooden signs reading "Obama Presidential Library":

According to the Omaha World Herald and the Lincoln Journal Star, many Norfolk residents were upset by the float, with some decrying the display as a racist attack on the president.

“I’m angry and I’m scared,” Glory Kathurima, a Norfolk resident who is originally from Kenya, told the Journal Star. “This float was not just political; this was absolutely a racial statement.”

Kathurima says she wrote to the town's mayor as well as the Chamber of Commerce expressing her concerns with the float.

State party officials offered similar criticism.

“We have seen many times when Nebraskans disapproved of the President, but this clearly crosses the line.” Nebraska Democratic Party executive director Dan Marvin said in a Saturday statement.

 “There is a level of respect for the office of the Presidency which should not be crossed. It's beyond disappointing the City of Norfolk, it’s officials, and citizens would allow such a thing.”

The presidential library outhouse comparison has become somewhat of a conservative meme in recent years. A similar structure was on display at Montana's state Republican convention in 2012. And last fall, an outhouse with a "presidential library" sign drew criticism in a small New Mexico town.

Rick Konopasek, a member of the Norfolk parade committee, defended the float, comparing it to a political cartoon and noting that multiple parade judges awarded it an "honorable mention."

"It's obvious the majority of the community liked it," he said. "So should we deny the 95 percent of those that liked it their rights, just for the 5 percent of people who are upset?"


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Ordinary Americans caught up in data sweep

7/8/2014

WASHINGTON (AP) — When the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted the online accounts of legally targeted foreigners over a four-year period it also collected the conversations of nine times as many ordinary Internet users, both Americans and non-Americans, according to a probe by The Washington Post.

Nearly half of those surveillance files contained names, email addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents, the Post reported in a story posted on its website Saturday night. While the federal agency tried to protect their privacy by masking more than 65,000 such references to individuals, the newspaper said it found nearly 900 additional email addresses that could be strongly linked to U.S. citizens or residents.

At the same time, the intercepted messages contained material of considerable intelligence value, the Post reported, such as information about a secret overseas nuclear project, double-dealing by an ostensible ally, a military calamity that befell an unfriendly power, and the identities of aggressive intruders into U.S. computer networks.

As an example, the newspaper said the files showed that months of tracking communications across dozens of alias accounts led directly to the capture in 2011 of a Pakistan-based bomb builder suspected in a 2002 terrorist bombing in Bali. The Post said it was withholding other examples, at the request of the CIA, that would compromise ongoing investigations.

The material reviewed by the Post included roughly 160,000 intercepted e-mail and instant-message conversations, some of them hundreds of pages long, and 7,900 documents taken from more than 11,000 online accounts. It spanned President Barack Obama's first term, 2009 to 2012, and was provided to the Post by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden.

The daily lives of more than 10,000 account holders who were not targeted were catalogued and recorded, the Post reported. The newspaper described that material as telling "stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes." The material collected included more than 5,000 private photos, the paper said.

The cache Snowden provided to the newspaper came from domestic NSA operations under the broad authority granted by Congress in 2008 with amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, according to the Post.

By law, the NSA may "target" only foreign nationals located overseas unless it obtains a warrant based on probable cause from a special surveillance court, the Post said. "Incidental collection" of third-party communications is inevitable in many forms of surveillance, according to the newspaper. In the case of the material Snowden provided, those in an online chat room visited by a target or merely reading the discussion were included in the data sweep, as were hundreds of people using a computer server whose Internet protocol was targeted.

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Where unaccompanied illegal immigrant children are going

7/8/2014

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Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary Jeh Johnson is refusing to answer if the more than 50,000 unaccompanied children will be deported.

If they're not, where will these children stay in the United States?

Action 4 News did some digging to find out.

After children are apprehended by the Border Patrol they are turned over to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) so Action 4 News asked HHS, ‘If the children are not immediately deported what happens next?’

Health and Human Services tells Action 4 News they are unable to arrange media interviews regarding the HHS unaccompanied alien children program but through a little research on government websites we found what happens.

According to a 2008 law, children must "be promptly placed in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child."
1) After the child arrives in the U.S. they are identified and undergo a health screening and immigration processing.
2) The child is then transferred to a short-term multi-agency center where HHS provides medical checks, immunizations and shelter assignments.
3) DHS then transports them to an HHS run shelter like the one set up at Lackland Air Force base in San Antonio. (There are also sites run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement in Los Fresnos and other cities in the valley and south Texas.)
4) The children stay at the shelters until a family member is located in the U.S. The average length of stay is 35 days.
5) About 85 percent of children are placed with a family member or other sponsor.

Weslaco immigration attorney San Juanita Campos says the children are treated no differently than a citizen.

"The child will be treated like a child that is abandoned in the United States with child protective services," Campos said.

But the surge of children this past month has overcrowded the system.

From 2003 to 2011 about 6,700 children went through this process every year, the numbers then began escalating in 2012.

Only half way through 2014, we have almost seen as many children as the government anticipated for the entire year.

"This influx is very different than with other children, you don't see too many kids this young traveling alone,” Campos said.

And with such a drastic increase Campos says if the children's families aren't found, the children may end up in the foster system here in the United States.

"They are sending kids into foster care because now they are treating this like a humanitarian issue versus an immigration issue so they have to run then through the foster care system,” Campos said.

Many are asking how much these unaccompanied children will cost taxpayers.

Congress appropriated $868 million for the projected 60,000 children anticipated this year.

With hundreds more crossing the border every day that number is expected to rise.

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Authorities Arrest 12 Kidnappers in Mexico-7 are Nigerians

7/8/2014

MEXICO CITY – Authorities arrested 12 suspected kidnappers and rescued two captives in separate operations in Mexico, officials said.

Federal Police officers arrested three suspected kidnappers, including a minor, in central Mexico and rescued a 14-year-old who had been abducted last month, the National Security Commission said.

 The operation was conducted in the city of Huixquilucan, thanks to a tip from the public.

Huixquilucan is in Mexico state, which surrounds the Federal District and forms part of the Mexico City metropolitan area.

Luis Eduardo Gaviño Chavez, 32, who handled negotiations and collected ransom payments, Ignacio Leyva Maldonado, 40, and an unidentified minor were arrested, officials said.

State authorities, meanwhile, arrested nine suspected kidnappers, including seven Nigerians, and rescued a teenage girl abducted on June 20 in Mexico state.

Relatives of the 16-year-old victim, who was kidnapped outside her family’s house in the city of Nextlalpan, contacted authorities, the Mexico state Attorney General’s Office said.

The victim was taken to a house in the city of Zumpango and the kidnappers contacted her family to demand a ransom payment, the AG’s office said.

Police arrested two suspects, one of whom is a minor, when they tried to collect the ransom and were led to the house where the victim was being held, the AG’s office said.

 Officers arrested the other seven suspects, all Nigerians, the AG’s office said.

The Nigerians went to Mexico “some time ago (to work) for a computer repair company that no longer exists,” the AG’s office said in a statement.

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White House: “Most” Illegal Child Migrants in U.S. to Be Deported

7/8/2014

WASHINGTON – The White House toughened its stance on the situation created by the massive arrival of unaccompanied and undocumented Central American children along the U.S. southern border, saying that “most” of them do not meet the requirements to be allowed to remain in the country for humanitarian reasons and will be deported.

“Based on what we know about these cases, it is unlikely that most of these kids will qualify for humanitarian relief... and what that means is, it means that they will not have a legal basis for remaining in this country and will be returned,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told a press conference.

To date, the Barack Obama administration had only said that undocumented minors who reach this country will be submitted to a deportation process, but the immigration court makes each decision case by case and considers the risks each might run upon returning to their country of origin.

The U.S. government on Tuesday will send Congress its definitive plan for speeding up deportation of undocumented Central American children who come to this country, most of them from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Various media estimate the supplementary emergency budget that Obama will ask Congress to approve in order to deal with the border situation will come to about $2 billion.

In addition, Obama will ask that more authority be granted to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to accelerate the process of deporting the minors, who are currently being housed in federal shelters or with relatives while they await the processing of their cases.

According to government data, some 90 unaccompanied children and teenagers cross the U.S.-Mexico border every day, and some 52,000 have been detained in the last nine months, a figure that could climb to 100,000 by the end of the year.

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The Familiar Theme of "Restoring" Historical Injustices

7/7/2014

President of Zimbabwe Orders Whites Out, Executive Order Dictates Whites Can No Longer Own Land In Zimbabwe 

If you get your news from the Obama Administration or the U.S. State Department you probably haven’t heard about this yet. That’s because the U.S. President, a man who far too often comments on issues of racism with the purpose of stirring emotions, has not held a press conference about what might be the largest act of racism in modern history.

It is now confirmed that President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe has sealed the deal as dictator and declared that whites are no longer allowed to own land in his country. He’s officially booting all white farmers and taking their land.

Via Daily Nation:

The 90 year-old old leader, who launched a violent land reform programme in 2,000 that displaced the majority of the 4,000 white commercial farmers, on Wednesday said Zimbabwe was no country for white farmers.

“There are white farmers who are still on the land and have the protection of some Cabinet ministers and politicians as well as traditional leaders,” President Mugabe said.

“That should never happen and we will deal with ministers but as for our chiefs we do not want to harass you. We do not want trouble.

“I have been given a list of 35 white farmers in Mashonaland West (province) alone and in just a few districts that have been audited.

“We say no to whites owning our land and they should go.

“They can own companies and apartments in our towns and cities but not the soil.

“It is ours and that message should ring loud and clear in Britain and the United States.”

President Mugabe has often justified the wholesale seizure of productive farms saying he was correcting historical injustices.

This ignorant statement ignores the fact that most of these farmers, if not all of them, personally had nothing to do with any ‘historical injustices.’ This sets a dangerous precedence and it’s shameful the world’s leaders aren’t denouncing it.

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Veteran dies waiting for ambulance in VA hospital

7/7/2014

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A veteran who collapsed in an Albuquerque Veteran Affairs hospital cafeteria — 500 yards from the emergency room — died after waiting around 20 minutes for an ambulance, officials confirmed Thursday.

It took between 15 and 20 minutes for the ambulance to be dispatched and take the man from one building to the other, which is about a five-minute walk, officials at the hospital said.

Kirtland Air Force Medical Group personnel performed CPR until the ambulance arrived, VA spokeswoman Sonja Brown said.

Staff followed policy in calling 911 when the man collapsed on Monday, she said. "Our policy is under expedited review," Brown said.

That policy is a local one, she said.

The man's name hasn't been released.

News of the man's death spread Thursday at the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center among veterans who were visiting for various medical reasons.

Lorenzo Calbert, 65, a U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War, said it was sad that a fellow veteran had to die so close to where he could have received help.

"There's no reason for it," he said. "They have so many workers. They could have put him on the gurney and run faster than that ambulance."

Paul Bronston, a California emergency-room physician and chair of Ethics and Professional Policy Committee of the American College of Medical Quality, said it may sound ridiculous that staff had to call 911 but that practice is the standard at hospitals. Typically, an ambulance would arrive faster, and other factors can stall workers trying to rush patients to the emergency room on foot, he said.

"The question I would have (is) ... was there an AED (automated external defibrillator) on site as required?" he said. Bronston said 90 percent of those who collapse are afflicted by heart problems and an AED could help them.

It was not known what caused the man to collapse or whether an AED was nearby.

The death comes as the Department of Veterans Affairs remains under scrutiny for widespread reports of long delays for treatment and medical appointments and of veterans dying while on waiting lists.

A review last week cited "significant and chronic system failures" in the nation's health system for veterans. The review also portrayed the struggling agency as one battling a corrosive culture of distrust, lacking in resources and ill-prepared to deal with an influx of new and older veterans with a range of medical and mental health care needs.

The scathing report by Deputy White House chief of staff Rob Nabors said the Veterans Health Administration, the VA sub agency that provides health care to about 8.8 million veterans a year, has systematically ignored warnings about its deficiencies and must be fundamentally restructured.

Marc Landy, a political science professor at Boston College, said the Department of Veterans Affairs is a large bureaucracy with various local policies like the one under review in Albuquerque.

Although the agency needs to undergo reform, Landy said it's unfair to attack the VA too harshly on the recent Albuquerque death because it appears to be so unusual.

"I think we have to be careful," he said. "Let's not beat up too much on the VA while they are already facing criticism."

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Those Amazing Anchor Babies: Texas most wanted sex offender caught in Houston

7/7/2014

A top 10 Texas Most Wanted sex offender has been arrested after he failed to comply with sex offender requirements.

Clemente Davila was caught in Houston on Thursday, July 3rd at a home during the morning hours.

An investigation led police to the home in Houston.

The San Marcos man was convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl back in 2006.

He failed to comply with sex offender registry in 2012, and in 2013 a warrant was issued for his arrested in connection to a probation violation.

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Central American Ministers Analyze Child Emigration to U.S.

7/7/2014

SAN SALVADOR – Foreign ministers of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras met in the Salvadoran capital to analyze the actions their countries should take in the case of children traveling illegally to the United States, officials said Saturday.

The meeting behind closed doors began at 9:00 a.m. in San Salvador, a spokesperson for the Salvadoran Foreign Ministry told Efe without specifying the place or giving any further details.

The meeting was called to review the actions taken up to now by the three countries and to find new ways to protect emigrant children, the same source told Efe.

It will also serve to launch a campaign aimed at raising awareness about the danger of minors emigrating to the United States.

The results of the meeting will be announced in a communique, the source said.

Around 90 unaccompanied children cross the U.S. border from Mexico every day.

Over the past nine months, some 52,000 minors have been detained after entering the United States illegally, mostly coming from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, according to official U.S. figures.

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Bolivian Cops Occupy Command Centers to Demand Pay Hike

7/7/2014

Bolivian Cops Occupy Command Centers to Demand Pay Hike

LA PAZ – Hundreds of rank and file Bolivian police mutinied on Thursday, occupying command centers in La Paz and in the central city of Cochabamba to press demands for higher pay.

Dozens of cops, some wearing ski masks, fired tear gas as they stormed the UTOP tactical headquarters in La Paz, which is located next to the Foreign Ministry and just a block away from Congress and the presidential palace.

The mutineers resorted to tear gas again when the provincial police commander, Col. Edward Barrientos, approached the UTOP command post in a bid to initiate a dialogue with the disgruntled officers.

In Cochabamba, officers declared a strike and a dozen or so police wives initiated a hunger strike outside the municipal headquarters.

The mutinous cops are demanding an increase to bring their base pay to a minimum of $301 a month.

They also want the $57.40 they currently receive each month in the form of a bonus to be incorporated into the base salary.

The mutiny was sparked by the interior ministry’s refusal to fuse the bonus with base pay, Javier Quispe, president of the Anssclapol union representing patrolmen and sergeants, told Radio Erbol.

The police feel betrayed because the ministry had previously indicated that the combination of the bonus and base pay was feasible, Quispe said.

The interior minister, Carlos Romero, called the mutiny “unjust” and said he was ready to meet with the unhappy officers, but not under threat.

Under President Evo Morales, who took office in early 2006, spending on compensation for Bolivia’s nearly 37,000 police personnel has increased 172 percent, the minister said.

Police have been receiving annual pay hikes that are above the rate of inflation, Romero said.

Lower-ranking cops mounted a similar uprising in 2012 in La Paz, setting patrol cars on fire and laying siege to government buildings.

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