Category: Guatemala
This December, heads of state from some 180 countries will convene in Kyoto, Japan in an attempt to negotiate the first internationally binding treaty to control levels of carbon dioxide and other climate-altering emissions. It is designed to be the next step in a process which began in 1992, at the UN Earth Summit Read more…
Resource Allocation in a Weapons Culture The United States remains a weapons culture today, with the MIC still powerful and dominant in national priorities. This is strikingly displayed in the Center for Defense Information’s (CDI) chart (shown below) depicting Clinton’s proposed 1998 allocation of discretionary (as opposed to mandatory) spending. It can be seen Read more…
Part of the reason why I write about the media is because I am interested in the whole intellectual culture, and the part of it that is easiest to study is the media. It comes out every day. You can do a systematic investigation. You can compare yesterday’s version to today’s version. There is a lot of evidence about what’s played Read more…
Edward S. Herman The hunt is on once again for war criminals, with ongoing trials of accused Serbs in The Hague, NATO raids seizing and killing other accused Serbs, and much discussion and enthusiasm in the media for bringing Pol Pot to trial, which the editors of the New York Times assure us would be Read more…
Bob Harris: Where’s There’s Smoke… Someone’s Getting BurnedHarris OK, so the big tobacco companies and their lobbyists have cobbled together a backroom deal to save their hides. And now the various state Attorneys General can return to their respective capitals and grandstand the agreement triumphantly. Neville Chamberlain did the same thing once. Didn’t help. Yeah, the bad guys have to pour Read more…
Edward S. Herman The mainstream media carry out their propaganda service on behalf of the corporate and political establishment in many ways: by choice of topics addressed (government rather than corporate abuses, welfare rather than Pentagon waste, Kadaffi rather than Guatemalan state terrorism), by their framing of issues (GDP growth rather than distribution, Fed Read more…
Clara James: Haiti: The Roof Is LeakingClara James On April 6, Haiti held elections to fill one-third of the Senate seats and positions on over 500 communal and town councils. The only problem was, most Haitians did not go to the polls. Only about 5 percent of those eligible to vote even bothered. Almost before local commentators could react, Washington Read more…
Tom Johnson: Human Rights Watch World Report 1997: Events Of 1996In January 1997, the international human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, released its seventh annual report on the worldwide condition of human rights. The report, overall, finds human rights’ conditions bleak and deteriorating. However, the organization, financed by individuals and foundations throughout the world, also finds reasons for hope. According to the report, "…the Read more…
The Philadelphia Inquirer (Inky) is widely regarded as a very good newspaper. This reputation derives in part from its great superiority over its predecessor, Walter Annenberg’s Inquirer, notorious as a partisan Republican rag and instrument of Annenberg’s personal vendettas (most famously, his refusal to allow mention of the name of the liberal Democratic Governor Read more…
Piet van Lier: No Justice, But Peace (For Now)Piet van Lier Give me a U. Give me an R. Give me an N. Give me a G. What’s it spell? U-R-N-G! I can’t hear you. U-R-N-G! U-R-N-G! U-R-N-G!" It sounded like a high school basketball game, but several hundred representatives of Guatemala’s popular movement were doing something they never had the chance Read more…