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Ríos Montt Genocide Verdict Annulled, But Activists Ensure US-Backed Crimes Will Never Be Forgotten

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Juan Gonzalez, Amy Goodman - May. 23 (News Report) - As Guatemala's high court annuls former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt's genocide conviction, we're joined by two people who have worked tirelessly to bring perpetrators of war crimes in the country to justice. Helen Mack, one of Guatemala's most well-known human rights activists, fought for years to prosecute the government forces who assassinated her sister, anthropologist Myrna Mack on Sept. 11, 1990. A Right Livelihood Award Winner, today she heads the Myrna Mack Foundation, named after her sister. We also speak with Kate Doyle, a senior analyst of U.S. policy in Latin America and the director at the Guatemala Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, who is featured in the documentary, "Granito: How to Nail a Dictator." Both Mack and Doyle attended Ríos Montt's recent trial.

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How Latin Culture Got More Gay

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By HÉCTOR CARRILLO - May. 17 (Opinion) - Op-Ed Contributor: How Latin Culture Got More Gay

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Eduardo Galeano, Chronicler of Latin America's "Open Veins," on His New Book "Children of the Days"

Wed, 08 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - May. 08 (Interview) - One of Latin America’s most acclaimed writers, Eduardo Galeano is out with the new book, "Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History." Galeano's classic "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent," made headlines when Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez gave President Obama a copy at the Summit of the Americas in 2009. Since its publication in 1971, "Open Veins" has sold over a million copies worldwide despite being banned by the military governments in Chile, Argentina and his native country of Uruguay. While in exile after the Uruguayan military junta seized power in a 1973 coup, Galeano began work on his classic trilogy, "Memory of Fire," which rewrites five centuries of North and South American history.

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Obama wraps up Latin American trip, reaffirms hopes for immigration reform

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Zachary A. Goldfarb - May. 05 (News Report) - SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — President Obama on Saturday completed a three-day visit to Mexico and Costa Rica and now returns to Washington with hopes of finishing what could become the biggest accomplishment of his second term: an overhaul of immigration laws. ...

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The Kilburn Manifesto: our challenge to the neoliberal victory

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Stuart Hall - Apr. 24 (Opinion) - Elites are using the crisis of global capital to reassert power. But this is no time for retreat. Our manifesto outlines the alternative The crisis in the global economic system triggered by the banking collapse of 2006-08 has precipitated a new moment in the evolution of global capitalism. But its novelty is not generally understood. Some previous crises, most famously the great crash and depression of the 1930s, produced radical social change: the welfare state and New Deal , as well as the rise of fascism. In the past five years protest groups such as Occupy have appeared, and resistance to austerity has grown. Yet there has been no rupture in the system or its governing ideology. Indeed, elites have used the crisis in Europe and north America to advance the neoliberal project, as unrelenting attacks on living standards, the NHS and the welfare state in Britain show. The disintegration of the British postwar settlement was the central project of one of the new right's most politically ...

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USA Today: Venezuelans Voted for High Unemployment and Food Shortages

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - By Peter Hart - Apr. 20 (Comment) - Venezuelans know a different reality. As noted by FAIR, poverty was cut in half from 2002-10; extreme poverty was even more dramatic. Access to healthcare and free education increased. As Mark Weisbrot argued in the Guardian, this record was a notable turnaround from the pre-Chavez years. Unemployment is currently estimated to be 8 percent in Venezuela–but it was above 14 percent when Chavez took office in 1999. Inflation is estimated at 20.9 percent–but it peaked near 120 percent in 1996. That's not to say there aren't significant problems in the country. But a news report that chooses to ignore this part of the Chavez legacy is a bit like saying Venezuelans have been fooled about the state of their own lives.

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

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Allan Nairn - Apr. 19 (News Report) - Ríos Montt was charged in connection with the slaughter of more than 1,700 people in Guatemala’s Ixil region after he seized power in 1982. His 17-month rule is seen as one of the bloodiest chapters in Guatemala’s decades-long campaign against Maya indigenous people, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. The trial took a surprising turn last week when Guatemala President Gen. Otto Pérez Molina was directly accused of ordering executions

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Genocide Trial of Former Dictator Ríos Montt Suspended After Intervention by Guatemalan President

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Juan Gonzalez - Apr. 19 (News Report) - A historic trial against former U.S.-backed Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity came to an abrupt end Thursday when an appeals court suspended the trial before a criminal court was scheduled to reach a verdict. Ríos Montt on was charged in connection with the slaughter of more than 1,700 people in Guatemala’s Ixil region after he seized power in 1982

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Hunt for Kony becomes a casualty of Central African Republic overthrow

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - Apr. 04 (News Analysis) - The country's membership in the African Union has been suspended, putting a freeze on the AU's military effort there to catch notorious warlord Joseph Kony. ...

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American Woman Gang-Raped on Transit Van in Rio de Janeiro

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Simon Romero, Taylor Barnes - Apr. 02 (News) - The harrowing assault stunned many in Brazil, especially as Rio de Janeiro tries to promote itself as a city on the mend and prepares to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games.

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Will Congress Stop US Support for Honduras' Death Squad Regime?

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Mark Weisbrot - Apr. 01 (Special Report) - Five young men walk down a quiet street in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. A big black SUV pulls up, followed by a second vehicle. Two masked men with bullet-proof vests jump out of the lead car, with AK-47s raised. The two youths closest to the vehicles see that they have no chance of running, so they freeze and put their hands in the air. The other three break into a sprint, with bullets chasing after them from the assassins' guns. Miraculously, they escape, with one injured - but the two who surrendered are forced to lie face down on the ground. The two students, who were brothers 18- and 20-years-old, are murdered with a burst of bullets, in full view of the camera. Less than 40 seconds after their arrival, the assassins are driving away, never to be found. The high level of professional training and modus operandi of the assassins have led many observers to conclude that this was a government operation.

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Brazil Violently Ousts Indigenous Village Ahead of World Cup

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Elisa Thiago - Mar. 25 (News) - Brazilian police violently evicted a group of indigenous people from a building they had occupied in Rio de Janeiro to make way for a sports museum, the latest in a series of evictions that have drawn criticism from human rights defenders as Brazil prepares to host the 2014 World Cup.

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BBC-Guardian Exposé Uses WikiLeaks to Link Iraq Torture Centers to U.S. Col. Steele & Gen. Petraeus

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Maggie O'Kane - Mar. 22 (Investigative Report) - A shocking new report by The Guardian and BBC Arabic details how the United States armed and trained Iraqi death squads that ran torture centers. It is a story that stretches from the U.S.-backed death squads in Central America during the 1980s to the imprisoned Army whistleblower Bradley Manning.

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Argentina's Kirchner raises Falklands with Pope Francis

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - Mar. 18 (News Report) - Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner says she has asked for the Pope's intervention in the Falklands dispute between her country and the UK.

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Pope Francis is wrong on Falklands, says David Cameron

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Ian Traynor - Mar. 15 (News Report) - Less than 48 hours into the world's first Latin American papacy, David Cameron took issue in public with Pope Francis on Friday, quipping that the "white smoke over the Falklands was pretty clear" and dismissing the pontiff's explicit claims backing Argentinian ownership of the South Atlantic islands.

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Pope Francis Can't Escape Argentina's Dark Past - Dashiell Bennett - The Atlantic Wire

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

theatlanticwire.com - By Dashiell Bennett - Mar. 15 (News Report) - The world is still learning much about the life and history of Pope Francis, and now the Vatican finds itself having to directly confront the most troubling story from his early life in Argentina. On Friday, the Catholic Church was forced to deny charges that then-Cardinal Bergoglio was complicit in the state-sponsored terrorism during Argentina's "Dirty War" of the 1970s and early 1980s.

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‘Dirty War’ Questions for Pope Francis

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Mar. 14 (Investigative Report) - The U.S. “news” networks bubbled with excitement over the selection of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to be Pope Francis I. But there was silence on the obvious question that should be asked about any senior cleric from Argentina: What was Bergoglio doing during the “dirty war,”

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How I Was Offered My Very Own Safari

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Corbin Hiar - Mar. 12 (Investigative Report) - Mother Jones insisted that before my investigation of congressional conservation junkets went to print, I try everything I could to get a response from the colorful figure who launched and then left the shadowy foundation at the center of the story. So, after spending over four months reporting on ethically questionable trips arranged by the International Conservation Caucus Foundation, I got a hold of a man with a deep Southern drawl and—if he was who I thought he was—first-hand knowledge of ICCF's junkets. "Is this David Barron?" I asked. "This is," he said. After that came a long series understatements, the first of which was my own: "I've been trying to reach you in regards to your involvement with the International Conservation Caucus Foundation." My previous attempts to reach Barron had entailed, among other things, emailing several addresses I had for him and calling a series of listed and unlisted phone numbers associated with him using my Brooklyn cell phone number, ...

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In Venezuela, oil and idealism won't mix forever

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Christian Science Monitor - Mar. 10 (Special Report) - Venezuela's oil is too big for major energy companies to ignore and too risky to plunge into. Eventually, post-Chávez Venezuela will choose pragmatism over ...

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Facing the Threat of the Trans-Pacific Treaty

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

The Tyee - By Raul Burbano, Kristen Beifus, Manuel Pérez-Rocha - Mar. 08 (Opinion) - Since NAFTA was signed almost 20 years ago, all three North American countries have seen good jobs vanish, worsening income inequality, public services weakened through underfunding or offloaded to the private sector, increased food insecurity (in particular in Mexico), and ecosystems on the point of breaking. NAFTA promised a flourishing North American economy that would benefit all. In Jan. 2014, NAFTA has been in place for 20 years and the promised trickle down benefits have not been realized by communities.

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NYT Debates Hugo Chavez–Minus the Debate

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

FAIR - By Peter Hart - Mar. 08 (Review) - "On Eve of His Funeral, Debating Chávez’s Legacy" is the headline over William Neuman's piece in the New York Times today (3/8/13). Funny headline, since there was no one in the Times' "debate" who argued that Chávez left much of anything.

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

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

FAIR - By Jim Naureckas - Mar. 08 (News Analysis) - 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 and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi.

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Operation Condor Trial Tackles Coordinated Campaign By Latin American Dictatorships To Kill Leftists

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Juan Gonzalez, Amy Goodman - Mar. 07 (News Report) - A historic trial underway in Argentina is set to reveal new details about how Latin American countries coordinated with each other in the 1970s and ‘80s to eliminate political dissidents. The campaign known as "Operation Condor" involved military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. They worked together to track down, kidnap and kill people they labeled as terrorists: leftist activists, labor organizers, students, priests, journalists, guerilla fighters and their families. The campaign was launched by the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and evidence shows the CIA and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were complicit from its outset. We're joined by John Dinges, author of "The Condor Years: How Pinochet and his Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents." The book brings together interviews and declassified intelligence records to reconstruct the once-secret events.

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Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Dies

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Miguel Tinker Salas, Eva Golinger - Mar. 07 (News Report) - Hugo Chávez Dead: Transformed Venezuela & Survived U.S.-Backed Coup, Now Leaves Uncertainty Behind

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Hugo Chávez Dead: Transformed Venezuela & Survived U.S.-Backed Coup, Now Leaves Uncertainty Behind

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Juan Gonzalez, Elias Jaua, Henrique Capriles, Evo Morales, Dilma Rousseff, Ollanta Humala, Amy Goodman - Mar. 06 (News Report) - With the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez after a two-year fight with cancer, we host a roundtable discussion on a revolutionary leader whose democratic-socialist policies not only transformed his country, but helped steer the entire Latin American region away from U.S.-backed neoliberalism. We're joined by five guests: Miguel Tinker Salas, Pomona College professor and author of two books on Venezuela; Venezuelan-American attorney Eva Golinger, a friend and adviser to Chávez; New York University professor and author Greg Grandin; Gregory Wilpert, founder of Venezuelanalysis.com; and Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based policy forum on Western Hemisphere affairs. We spend the hour on the life of Chávez, his legacy, and what may come next in Venezuela. [includes rush transcript - partial. More to come. Check back soon.]

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