Recent Blogs
You have to love this headline. The “missing opposition figure” isn’t missing! Ex-Ecuador leader sought in case of missing opposition figure In 2012, Fernando Balda was the victim of a foiled kidnapping in COLOMBIA. If Balda was ever “missing” it was for a few hours (if that) back in 2012! The culprits were tried and Read more…
Although many people have criticized the bizarre nature of Donald Trump’s diplomacy with North Korea, his recent lovefest with Kim Jong Un does have the potential to reduce the dangers posed by nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula. Even so, buried far below the mass media coverage of the summit spectacle, the reality is that Read more…
Although the U.S. mass media are awash with stories about America’s “booming economy,” the benefits are distributed very unequally, when they are distributed at all. Buoyed by soaring corporate profits and stock prices, the richest Americans have reached new and dazzling heights of prosperity. As of May 2018, the growing crop of billionaires included corporate Read more…
Kath Viner became the Guardian’s editor–in-chief in 2015. She reminds me of OAS chief Luis Almagro and Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno: all three have served the US Empire at least, if not more, slavishly than openly declared right wingers might have done. All were initially applauded by the left who heaved sighs of relief when they got in. Read more…
Images and statistics regarding Venezuela’s economic crisis are relentlessly aimed a demonizing President Maduro’s government and absolving Trump for what U.S. sanctions do to Venezuelans. For example, in these Reuters articles below, the harmful impact of the Trump’s economic sanctions on the population (and their illegality) can only be reported as claims by the Venezuelan Read more…
One of the most important achievements of former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa’s ten years in office was the vast improvements in Ecuador’s roads. The time required to travel from previously isolated regions of the country to the most populated (and therefore economically developed and politically influential) was drastically reduced. The comfort and safety of road Read more…
It’s not every day that an insider tells us how preparations for nuclear war have been proceeding. So, when one does, it’s worth sitting up and taking notice. Although Daniel Ellsberg is best-known for his 1971 role in delivering the Pentagon Papers (the Top Secret Defense Department study of U.S. involvement in Vietnam) to the Read more…
America’s oft-quoted Declaration of Independence, when discussing “unalienable rights,” focused on “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Although “happiness” is rarely referred to by today’s government officials, the general assumption in the United States and elsewhere is that governments are supposed to be fostering the happiness of their citizens. Against this backdrop, it’s worth Read more…
Anyone who has been following the career of Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labour party since 2015, knows that his key allies within the party have been a small group of Labour MPs and the party membership. They have been Corbyn’s bulwark against a hard core of about 30-40 right wing Labour MPs who Read more…
I get lost in the words. I listen and watch this fool of a stooge president And then I look at my friends who live, work Or have fled from Central America Live in Venezuela Y me duele el corazón. ¿Qué puedo hacer? Una tristeza me lleva Como un abrigo en el verano I have Read more…
Go to source Is it war yet? Yes, in too many respects. It’s a relentless economic, diplomatic, and ideological war, spiced with (so far) just a dash of military war, and the strong scent of more to come. I mean war with Russia, of course, although Russia is the point target for a constellation of Read more…
I sent this note to the Guardian’s readers editor today about a Nick Cohen article that was both libelous and anti-Semitic.* The article has already been up for over a week. I wish I had noticed it earlier but I can seldom bother to read Cohen’s trash closely. _______ It is ok to conflate “the Read more…
The late Philip Agee, a former CIA officer who blew the whistle on its dirty dealings, was the Edward Snowden of his time. A 1961 diary entry of Agee’s said regarding a CIA program in Ecuador that “It costs about 50,000 dollars a year and in a place like Quito a thousand dollars a week Read more…
Add to that list the poet who rambles on in stolen dark a dark prepared in stark solemnity a dark unacceptable to the lavish word the poem struggles to breathe it crosses over and touches void and here it speaks attaches belongs the proverbial becoming adversary — We live of course in a world not Read more…
Early this February, the Republican-controlled Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed new federal budget legislation that increased U.S. military spending by $165 billion over the next two years. Remarkably, though, a Gallup public opinion poll, conducted only days before, found that only 33 percent of Americans favored increasing U.S. military spending, while 65 percent Read more…
An extremely long article in the New York Times today has the headline “Can Venezuela Be Saved?” The subhead reads “As a nation unwinds, Leopoldo López, the opposition’s most prominent leader, sits under house arrest and contemplates what might still be possible.” The article states “The world is full of byzantine methods to communicate through Read more…
An article by Julia Symmes Cobb and Anggy Polanco ran with the headline ‘Migrate or die’: Venezuelans flood into Colombia despite crackdown This article says Some 3 million Venezuelans – or a tenth of the population – have left Venezuelan since late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez started his Socialist revolution in 1999. UN population Read more…
ME: What is Amnesty’s position on the economic sanctions the Trump Administration has implemented against Venezuela? AMNESTY: Amnesty International monitors and documents human rights violations globally, regardless of the country or government exercising authority in the place where such violations occur, from Israel to Argentina, as well as the USA and Venezuela. Amnesty International believes Read more…
When Donald Trump was running for the presidency, he promised that, if he was elected, “American worker[s] will finally have a president who will protect them and fight for them.” Today, though, safely ensconced in the White House, President Trump is waging a fierce campaign against American workers. His appointments to federal positions created to Read more…
FAIR posted a piece of mine the other day (very proud of that as a long time fan) providing extremely important information about a referendum Ecuador held on Sunday – information that has been ignored by the international media. So of course, the day after the referendum, a flurry of articles appear continuing the same Read more…
In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. occupation authorities in Germany, checking on the effectiveness of their “denazification” program, polled Germans on whether they believed a civilian was “less worthy than a soldier.” One wonders what they would think of the exalted status that many Americans currently accord to anyone serving in the Read more…
the theoliberal dust will settle in time not before befuddling hearts, sinking minds, coalescing goodwill into mush and repeating mulch from a petrified storybook few cared would matter, but it did, and it stored dark endings as a matter of tact. the geoliberal must settle longitudinal accounts with the attitude of frost, and give; give Read more…
What is the one thing that would help the left right now and in the future? Having more resources. The left could do what it does now, just better, if we had more resources. Think of all the things that could grow with more money: Coops, legal aid, alternative media outlets, local chapter activities, social Read more…
I live in Denmark, a small country in Scandinavia, which, as I’m writing this, is a welfare state. We have free health care, high wages, progressive taxation, sustainable energy production, strong unions, democracy in universities, public-paid liveable income for students, a safety net for the unemployed, rent control, clinics for addicts, protection (though modest) for Read more…
US liberals have always preferred to have the US government use economic strangulation against its enemies rather than military force. They’ve also, much more than “conservatives”, stressed the importance of having accomplices (“allies” is common euphemism). David Smilde, in a New York Times op-ed, stated that a US military invasion of Venezuela would be “folly”. Read more…
Hi Alexandra: I find it remarkable how this article glosses over Lenin Moreno’s extreme hypocrisy and cynicism. He is literally doing the opposite of what he said he would do as a candidate when he ran as staunch Correa loyalist and defender of the government’s record – a government he was a part at the highest level for 10 years. Read more…
During the mid-1930s, a best-selling exposé of the international arms trade, combined with a U.S. Congressional investigation of munitions-makers led by Senator Gerald Nye, had a major impact on American public opinion. Convinced that military contractors were stirring up weapons sales and war for their own profit, many people grew critical of these “merchants of Read more…
November 6 was the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Charter of the Forest in England on November 6, 1217. This charter returned to free men rights of access to the royal forests of southern England that had been taken from them by William the Conqueror. It was the first time in European history Read more…
I. Do your words support this one tradition or that? did the vault of your craft meek out yet another salve or did it glare in revulsion to craft? do you salvage or savage the cow at the altar of the unholy? does the sacred tempt you to sacrilege or do you bow? will you Read more…
This October, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that its estimate of the cost for the planned “modernization” the U.S. nuclear weapons complex over the next three decades has risen to $1,200,000,000,000.00. For those of you not familiar with such lofty figures, that’s $1.2 trillion. Furthermore, when adjusted for inflation, the cost of the Read more…
Arch Blairite John Rentoul claimed that Jeremy Corbyn’s “complaint about growing global inequality is not based on facts” Corbyn had said “The growing concentration of unaccountable wealth and power in the hands of a tiny corporate elite, a system many call neoliberalism,…has sharply increased inequality, marginalisation, insecurity and anger across the world,” Chu’s article, contrary Read more…
John Lee Anderson rambled on for over 7,600 words in a New Yorker article about Venezuela. I’ll highlight some quotes from Anderson’s article and respond to them below: In all, a hundred and twenty protesters died in the fighting, and on two occasions National Guardsmen and chavista loyalists stormed the National Assembly to assault opposition legislators. Read more…
This is a very well done piece that Adam Johnson wrote for FAIR: “WaPo’s One-Sided Cheerleading for Coup and Intervention in Venezuela” I’d only add that while many people will see through the Trump administration, even the Obama admin, when it comes to foreign policy, this isn’t as likely when the basic US/corporate media position is echoed Read more…
Although the U.S. peace movement has been on the wane for about a decade, it remains a viable force in American life. Organizations like Peace Action, the American Friends Service Committee, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Jewish Voice for Peace, and numerous others have significant memberships, seasoned staff, and enough financial resources Read more…
If Reuters reported what the temperature was in Caracas on a given day I would not expect them to cite a source, but when you report sweeping claims about the Venezuelan government’s human rights record then citing a source and making an effort to assess its bias should be a standard journalistic procedure. This Read more…
It would be hard to surpass this use of social media (by a historian named Abdullah Al-Arian) to debunk imperial propaganda. Some highlights below. Al-Arian’s Twitter thread has so much more. The ones picked out of his compilation start over 60 years ago and progress to the present day. I thought it would be useful Read more…
I’ve written a lot about how much fierce opposition to the government is regularly expressed in Venezuela’s largest TV networks and newspapers. Western media and big NGOs have been relentlessly pushing the opposite view for almost two decades. Freedom of expression in Venezuela is constantly dying a rapid death according to them. Wouldn’t it be totally Read more…
A flurry of reports by corporate media today (see below) about Venezuela’s long time former prosecutor, Luisa Ortega Diaz, saying she is working to have President Maduro tried by the ICC. Ousted Venezuelan prosecutor seeks ICC probe into Maduro Venezuela’s ex-chief prosecutor asks international court to try Maduro Venezuela’s president accused of crimes against humanity Read more…
A Caracas-based journalist has expressed frustration to me that people on the Chavista side of the political divide, even those independent of the government, don’t answer his calls, don’t want to talk to him – basically don’t trust him. This piece by Girish Gupta of Reuters, depicting a Venezuelan supreme court judge as corrupt, is a nice illustration Read more…
The death of Ed Herman, co-author with Chomsky of the classic “Manufacturing Consent”, is a tremendous loss but he left behind a body a work to help us carry on his struggle. With Ed Herman’s words (above) in mind, consider some headlines today about Venezuela. Surprisingly one of the least dishonest was provided by Bloomberg News: A Reuters headline Read more…
CAAT calls Venezuela a “hybrid regime” by relying on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index which also labels the UK a “full democracy” – along with a few others like Canada and Spain. What a joke. In all of those “full democracies”, most of Venezuela’s opposition leaders would have been locked up and never seen or Read more…
An NBC news article on Venezuela stated Thanks to the “free press” how many people would know any better? Even Bernie Sanders’ campaign was ignorant (or dishonest) enough to call the late Hugo Chavez a dictator. Hugo Chavez and current president Nicolas Maduro were both democratically elected, but when Washington (and its accomplices in Ottawa Read more…
The reckless threats of nuclear war flung back and forth between the North Korean and U.S. governments remind me of an event in which I participated back in the fall of 1961, when I was a senior at Columbia College. At the end of August 1961, the Soviet government had announced that it was Read more…
There is useful information in this Reuters article but some comments are worth making: The headline is “Venezuela to restructure foreign debt, default looms as possibility” Reuters reports President Nicolas Maduro vowed to make a $1.1 billion payment on a bond maturing on Thursday, but also created a commission to study “restructuring of all future Read more…
A CBC news article reports that Trudeua’s foreign affairs minister, Chrystia Freeland “steps up diplomatic pressure on Venezuela, warns of refugee crisis” [1] Freeland makes a subtle appeal to xenophobia to justify Canada’s aping of Trump and other right wing governments in the region who want to see Venezuela’s government overthrown. Fortunately for Freeland, she Read more…
Based on recent economic developments, the super-rich don’t have much to complain about. A study just released by UBS, a major global financial services company, has revealed that, during 2016, the total wealth of the world’s billionaires rose by 17 percent―from $5.1 trillion to $6.0 trillion. Furthermore, the number of billionaires grew by 10 percent Read more…