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Newest Blog Entries:
Barack Obama’s visit to Mexico: The unmentionables | The Economist
Posted by Michael Butler, Tuesday, May 7, 2013Democracy Now: Allan Nairn Exposes Role of U.S. and New Guatemalan President in Indigenous Massacres
.. read transcript at Democracy Now
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Why is a senior regulator at the SEC spending his time telling an anti-Coke activist what to put on his website?
That's a tweet from Occupy Wall St to a story at Corporate Crime Reporter ..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.”.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Sunday, April 21, 2013
Tales of Reagan’s Guatemala Genocide
Posted by Michael Butler, Friday, April 19, 2013Mark Weisbrot: Nicolás Maduro is Venezuela’s Vote for Chávismo
tho it was close ..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 callexpect a recall election next year, and the year after that, and the year after that - also, too, US-gov't-backed coup attempts .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Monday, April 15, 2013
Operation Destabilize Venezuela and the Secret US Embassy Cables: Infiltrate, “Divide Chavismo”, “Isolate Chavez Internationally” | Global Research
Posted by Michael Butler, Saturday, April 13, 2013The New Yorker Corrects Two Errors on Venezuela, Refuses a Third
Keane Bhatt at NACLA ..[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!!].. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, April 12, 2013
US Aids Honduran Death Squads
Posted by Michael Butler, Monday, April 1, 2013President Hugo Chavez: A 21st Century Renaissance Man | Global Research
Posted by Michael Butler, Tuesday, March 19, 2013The Guardian: Pope Francis – questions remain over his role during Argentina’s dictatorship
more on the Pope/Right Wing Junta connection from The Guardian's Uki Goni and Jonathan Watts ..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.and then there's this tweet from wing nut pundit .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Saturday, March 16, 2013
Pope Francis’ Junta Past: Argentine Journalist on New Pontiff’s Ties to Abduction of Jesuit Priests
.. read transcript at Democracy Now
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Thursday, March 14, 2013
Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle – Salon.com
Posted by Michael Butler, Friday, March 8, 2013AP: Chavez Wasted His Money on Healthcare When He Could Have Built Gigantic Skyscrapers
AP business reporter Pamela Sampson via FAIR blog ..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 Dubaispeechless .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, March 8, 2013
FAIR: In Death as in Life, Chávez Target of Media Scorn
from the FAIR blog ("His independence, help for Venezuela's poor will not be forgiven") ..If world leaders were judged by the sheer volume of corporate media vitriol and misinformation about their policies, Chávez would be in a class of his own .. In reporting Chávez's death, little had changed. "Venezuela Bully Chávez Is Dead," read the New York Post's front page (3/6/13); "Death of a Demogogue" was on Time's home page (3/6/13). CNN host Anderson Cooper (3/5/13) declared it was "the death of a world leader who made America see red, as in Fidel Castro red, Venezuela's socialist president, Hugo Chávez." .. Many reports on Chávez's passing were quick to note the country's oil wealth. NBC's Williams asserted, "All this matters a lot to the U.S., since Venezuela sits on top of a lot of oil and that's how this now gets interesting for the United States."Maduro has already expelled two US diplomats in the past few days under accusations of planning to destabilize the country - the next few weeks should indeed be "interesting" .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Thursday, March 7, 2013
Democracy Now: Hugo Chávez Dead – Transformed Venezuela & Survived U.S.-Backed Coup, Now Leaves Uncertainty Behind
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Hugo Chavez legacy: a wedge between US, Latin America ( video)
Posted by Harry Sifton, Tuesday, March 5, 2013Ecuador Chooses Stimulus over Austerity
Posted by Michael Butler, Monday, February 18, 2013Ecuador: Left-Center Political Regimes versus Radical Social Movements | Global Research
Posted by Michael Butler, Friday, February 15, 2013Idle No More — no more is it just for Canada
Imani Altemus-Williams at Waging Non-Violence ..What began with four women organizing local teach-ins and rallies in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, last fall has grown into a global grassroots movement of indigenous and non-indigenous allies fighting for the sovereignty of indigenous people, the honoring of treaty rights, and the protection of land and water. Because these communities are determined to fight the exploitation of natural resources that is resulting in climate change and other environmental crises, their cause has the potential to impact the whole world.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Saturday, January 12, 2013
Mexico’s new government: With a little help from my friends | The Economist
Posted by Michael Butler, Monday, December 10, 2012Democracy Now: Oliver Stone on the Untold U.S. History from the Atomic Age to Vietnam to Obama’s Drone Wars
.. read transcript
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Saturday, November 17, 2012
Fidel Castro: Fidel Castro is dying
er, not really .. Castro makes fun of Yanki press ..While many persons in the world are deceived by information agencies which publish this nonsense - almost all in the hands of the privileged and rich - people believe less and less in them. Nobody likes to be deceived; even the most incorrigible liar expects to be told the truth. In April of 1961, everyone believed the information published in the news agencies that the mercenary invaders of Girón or Bay of Pigs, whatever one wants to call it, were approaching Havana, when in fact some of them were fruitlessly trying by boat to reach the yanki warships escorting them .. Birds of ill omen! I don’t even remember what a headache isye olde Fidel death rumor fetish - mab .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Saturday, November 10, 2012
Funny Blog
Posted by Alexander Harper, Friday, November 9, 2012Who Owns the World? Noam Chomsky on U.S.-Fueled Dangers, from Climate Change to Nuclear Weapons
.. read transcript @ Democracy Now
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Saturday, October 27, 2012
