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I never identified myself with leftwing politics until, sometime in the 1990’s, I read Noam Chomsky, and a short time after that, his friend and long time collaborator, Michael Albert. Much of the left, it had seemed to me, was riddled with bad ideas and hypocrisy. What these two guys, and a small group of others engaged in similar Read more…
Has nationalism captured the hearts and minds of the world’s people? It certainly seems to have emerged as a powerful force in recent years. Trumpeting their alleged national superiority and hatred of foreigners, political parties on the far right have made their biggest political advances since the 1930s. After the far right’s startling success, in Read more…
The North Korean government’s progress toward developing a long-range nuclear weapons capability, accompanied by bellicose pronouncements, has been alarming enough to spark worldwide public dismay and new sanctions by a unanimous UN Security Council. But even if, at the very best, sanctions (which, so far, have not worked) or diplomatic negotiations (which have yet to Read more…
Green Time TV Overcoming Irresponsibility by Don Fitz What are environmentalists to do when confronting irresponsible people with power? October 2017 Green Time episodes explore how to respond to a congress that will not provide medical care for all, a president who wants to destroy energy assistance for low income families and an economic system Read more…
The mocking headline to this Reuters article reads Venezuela’s new plan to beat hunger: Breed rabbits Mockery of the Maduro government in Venezuela routinely catches the approving and mirthful eyes of corporate journalists. The article states Maduro’s critics lampooned the idea. “Are you serious?” asked Henrique Capriles, a state governor and two-time opposition presidential candidate Read more…
Lilian Tintori is the wife of Leopoldo Lopez – a Venezuelan politician whom the western establishment has quite absurdly hailed as a hero. In her NYT op-ed from the other day Tintori wrote “We have no freedom of speech”. Here is lengthy interview Tintori gave in July on Venevision, a large private TV network that anyone in Read more…
In this op-ed from today in El Universal, a newspaper the international corporate media and NGOs like the Committee to Protect Journalists have depicted as having been taken over by the government in 2014, Julio Borges talks about his trip to Europe which was aimed at ramping up international pressure and condemnation of Venezuela’s government. Borges Read more…
Some whoppers were slipped into this transcript of an interview between Aljazeera’s Lucia Newman and the president of Venezuela’s Constituent Assembly (and former Foreign Minister) Delcy Rodriguez. Aljazeera says the “adapted” transcript has been “edited for clarity and brevity”. That’s an Orwellian way to put it. *** *** In the interview (the video) Rodriguez correctly Read more…
Alleged Venezuelan political prisoner (more on that below), Yon Goicoechea, had an op-ed published in the New York Times that made the following claim: A health minister was fired for releasing his department’s annual report, revealing that infant mortality has returned to 1950 levels. In 1959, Venezuela’s infant mortality rate (IMR) was 61.9 deaths per Read more…
RE Venezuela bars opposition activist from traveling to Europe An AP article reported the following today about the wife of jailed Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez. She is now part of a criminal investigation after 200 million Bolivares in cash were found in a car she owned. “Tintori said she kept such a large sum in Read more…