The Secrecy Surrounding Canada’s Tar Sands

Agents of Destabilization in Venezuela: The Dirty Hand of the National Endowment for Democracy | Global Research

Social Media and the Destabilization of Cuba: USAID’s Secret “Cuban Twitter” Intended to Stir Unrest | Global Research

Ottawa Actively Participated in Haiti Coup d’Etat: Canadians Apologize to Haiti, Ten Years after the Coup | Global Research

FOCUS | Snowden Files: NSA ‘Spied on Communications’ of Brazil and Mexico Presidents

Latin America Condemns US Espionage at United Nations Security Council | Global Research

Forcing Down Evo Morales’s Plane Was an Act of Air Piracy

Brazil protests show cost of hosting major sports events – World – CBC News

Ecuador to US: We Won’t Be ‘Blackmailed’ over Snowden | Common Dreams

The Guardian: Snowden Reveals America and Britain Spied On G20 Members

Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian/[Glenzilla]. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic

Noam Chomsky: Ronald Reagan’s Secret, Genocidal Wars

Nicaragua gives Chinese firm contract to build alternative to Panama Canal | World news | guardian.co.uk

Barack Obama’s visit to Mexico: The unmentionables | The Economist

Democracy Now: Allan Nairn Exposes Role of U.S. and New Guatemalan President in Indigenous Massacres

Why is a senior regulator at the SEC spending his time telling an anti-Coke activist what to put on his website?

It’s a remarkable letter — dated April 1, 2013. From Nicholas Panos, an attorney with the Office of Mergers and Acquisitions at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). To Ray Rogers, a veteran corporate campaigner and director of Corporate Campaign and the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke. In the letter, Panos calls on Rogers to delete portions of the Killer Coke web site that are critical of Coca Cola. Rogers, who runs his campaigns on a shoestring out of his offices in Brooklyn, New York, started the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke in 2003 to hold Coke’s “bottlers and subsidiaries accountable and to end the gruesome cycle of violence and collaboration with paramilitary thugs, particularly in Colombia. [] These atrocities include the systematic intimidation, kidnapping, torture and murder of union leaders and members of their families in efforts to crush their unions,” Rogers says. “In countries like Colombia and Guatemala, a strong union can mean the difference between life and death for people who dare to challenge corporate and political abuses.”

Tales of Reagan’s Guatemala Genocide

Mark Weisbrot: Nicolás Maduro is Venezuela’s Vote for Chávismo

Capriles is demanding an audit of 100% of all votes; Maduro has apparently agreed. But the audit is unlikely to change the outcome. Unlike in the United States, where in a close election we really don't know who won, the Venezuelan system is very secure.[] Jimmy Carter called Venezuela's electoral system "the best in the world." .. There were major improvements in Venezuelans' living standards during the Chávez years. After the government got control over the national oil industry, poverty was reduced by half and extreme poverty by about 70%. Real income per person grew by about 2.5% annually from 2004 to 2012, and inequality fell sharply. Unemployment was 8% in 2012, as opposed to 14.5% when Chávez took office. These numbers are not in dispute among economists or other experts, nor among international agencies such as the World Bank, IMF or UN. But they are rarely reported in the major western media .. But the new government does face serious challenges, and the closeness of this election should be a wake-up call

Operation Destabilize Venezuela and the Secret US Embassy Cables: Infiltrate, “Divide Chavismo”, “Isolate Chavez Internationally” | Global Research

The New Yorker Corrects Two Errors on Venezuela, Refuses a Third

[The New Yorker's Jon Lee Anderson] incorrectly claimed that “Venezuela leads Latin America in homicides” in his “The End of Chavez?” [] Actually, it is Honduras [with a US backed coup gov't etc etc] .. Another Anderson article—“Slumlord: What has Hugo Chávez wrought in Venezuela?”—also misled the print magazine’s readers by giving the impression that Chávez’s presidential tenure was predicated on a coup d’etat rather than his victories in over a dozen internationally vetted elections .. One month ago—the day Chávez died—Anderson wrote a third piece, for NewYorker.com, claiming: "[Venezuala is] one of the world’s most [] socially unequal countries" .. the CIA’s World Factbook ranks the country 68th out of 136 countries with available data on income inequality—that is to say, Venezuela is exactly in the middle [and the US has higher inequality!!]

US Aids Honduran Death Squads

President Hugo Chavez: A 21st Century Renaissance Man | Global Research

The Guardian: Pope Francis – questions remain over his role during Argentina’s dictatorship

As head of the Jesuit order from 1973 to 1979, Jorge Bergoglio – as the new pope was known until yesterday – was a member of the hierarachy during the period when the wider Catholic church backed the military government and called for their followers to be patriotic. Bergoglio twice refused to testify in court about his role as head of the Jesuit order. When he eventually appeared in front of a judge in 2010, he was accused by lawyers of being evasive. The main charge against Bergoglio involves the kidnapping of two Jesuit priests, Orland Yorio and Francisco Jalics, who were taken by Navy officers in May 1976 and held under inhumane conditions for the missionary work they conducted in the country's slums, a politically risky activity at the time. His chief accuser is journalist Horacio Verbitsky, the author of a book on the church called "El Silencio" ("The Silence"), which claims that Bergoglio withdrew his order's protection from the two priests, effectively giving the military a green light for their abduction.

Pope Francis’ Junta Past: Argentine Journalist on New Pontiff’s Ties to Abduction of Jesuit Priests

Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle – Salon.com

AP: Chavez Wasted His Money on Healthcare When He Could Have Built Gigantic Skyscrapers

Chavez invested Venezuela's oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world's tallest building in Dubai