Updates from March, 2009 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • InI 12:32 on March 20, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    El Salvador: Any real change with a new leader? By Stephen Lendman 

    Mauricio Funes likens himself to Brazil`s Lula, not Hugo Chavez or Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, and intends to be very friendly to business.

    Like other Latin American nations, El Salvador has had a long and troubled history, ruled from one decade to the next by successive military dictatorships, then since 1989 by the right wing National Republican Alliance or ARENA Party.

    Long-suffering Salvadorans recall the 1980s struggles when the Farabudo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) failed to end what the civil-military Junta leader, Jose Napoleon Duarte, told New York Times reporter Raymond Bonner in 1980:

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  • InI 10:34 on March 20, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    With Israel there will never be peace: INTERVIEW WITH KHALED MESHAAL By Gianni Perrelli 

    26 February, 2009

    KHALED-MESHAAL.jpg[Exclusive: The leader of Hamas in exile speaks. He announces an imminent conflict. That is because he says Tel Aviv is not interested in listening to Palestinians. And from America, the opening with Damascus was nothing but words. Conversation with Khaled Meshaal From the Italian news magazine L'Espresso. Translated by Mary Rizzo.]

    “In the name of God, the clement, the merciful, I would like to ask the first question. Is it possible that after the war against Gaza and our heroic resistance, Israel still does not understand that the peace process cannot be done without Hamas…?”

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  • InI 08:02 on March 20, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Palestine Video: Israeli soldiers say killing of civilians 'allowed' 

    19 March 2009

    Israel’s army is accused of war crimes after more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed in the war on Gaza. In interviews published by a leading Israeli newspaper, Israeli soldiers say killing Palestinian civilians and destroying their homes was allowed in Israel’s rules of engagement during the war.

    Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros reports from Jerusalem.”


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  • InI 19:53 on March 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Video: Iraq – Non-combat combat troops 

    Rebranding will not change fact that US troops in Iraq will be involved in combat

    Speaking to President Obama’s announcement of withdrawing US combat troops from Iraq within 18 months, Phyllis Bennis says, “Obama says that the combat mission will end but combat will not end. When you leave 50,000 troops on the ground in a volatile, war-like situation, there is going to be combat.”

    Part 2 of this interview will be published shortly.

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    BioPhyllis Bennis is a Senior Analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC. She is the author of Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis , Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power. and Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer.


     
  • InI 19:43 on March 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Saul Landau: Face the Facts – Capitalism has Failed 

    12 March, 2009 Op-Ed by Saul Landau

    Refusal by the Obama administration to face dire economic facts will cause foolishness or inaction. The people who put him in office need to organize before it’s too late.

    When the Soviet Union and its state socialism collapsed, the promoters of capitalism kvelled. But 10 years later, in the early Bush years, ENRON, a super giant corporation, got caught cooking its books to disguise the real state of its operations. It defrauded its stockholders and bilked California taxpayers by planning for an energy shortage at peak times and then jacking up prices. In doing its hanky panky ENRON colluded with a major accounting firm, Arthur Anderson. WorldCom and Adelphia went through similar versions of this corporate hanky panky — pre-dating the later banking and insurance horrors.

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  • InI 18:01 on March 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    COHA: Bolivia’s Evo Morales’ European Tour 2009: Russia Flies the Flag Over Latin America and Everyone’s A Winner… Mostly 

    • Moscow is increasing its presence in South America, the latest being its development and military agreements with Bolivia
    • Russian military helicopters to be used by Bolivian security forces for drug operations, sending a message to Washington that DEA aid is not needed in the Andes
    • Bolivia becomes the equivalent of Saudi Arabia when it comes to the lithium market, but will it help abate the former’s high poverty rating?
    • Bolivian leader Evo Morales seeking recognition as an autonomous figure and not a Chavez clone
    • Obama administration bestowing priority to Middle East and Asia; conversely Russia, France, Iran and China, among others, rule the roast in the Americas
    • The 5th Summit of the Americas to be held in April in Trinidad and Tobago will be the first meeting between Obama and all of the region’s leaders. Nevertheless, two months is a long time in politics and Washington continues to watch its influence drain in what increasingly must be viewed as its former ‘backyard’

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  • InI 17:46 on March 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Marc Becker: "El Salvador: Voting in Rebel Territory" 

    Heading out from San Salvador to Chalatenango, the roads are covered with political propaganda from the ruling right-wing ARENA party.  In the lead up to the March 15 presidential elections in this small Central American country, all of the utility posts have been painted in the party’s colors of red, white, and blue.  Presidential candidate Rodrigo Avila beams down from billboards with promises that he will rule with ‘sabiduría,’ with wisdom.  Smaller banners promise a future of freedom and prosperity.

    Once past the town of Chalatenango, however, the ARENA propaganda quickly disappears, replaced by the distinctive red graffiti of the leftist FMLN party and posters of their champion, journalist Mauricio Funes.  By the time we arrive at Cambridge’s sister city of San José de las Flores and Madison’s sister city of Arcatao, not a single ARENA marker is to be seen anywhere.

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  • InI 17:10 on March 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Video: Historic power shift in El Salvador 

    Journalist leads former guerrilla army to left’s first presidential victory in country’s history

    Just over 17 years since the 1992 Peace Accords brought an end to El Salvador’s vicious civil war, the country has seen its first peaceful transfer of power. V for victory hand signs and red flags were paraded throughout the country’s streets as the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, FMLN, won the presidency; thereby bringing to an end 20 straight years of rule by the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance, ARENA. El Salvador will be governed from the left for the first time since gaining its independence from Spain in 1821. The face of the victory was that of former television journalist Mauricio Funes, a political newcomer and the first FMLN leader to not have fought in the country’s horrific 12-year civil war.

     

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  • InI 13:02 on March 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    The Parable of the Shopping Mall By Alexander Cockburn 

    18 March, 2009

    The savage reverses for capitalism, the gaping wounds in its pretensions, comprise the single most salient feature in the world today. Whether in the collapse in the western banking system, the agonies of post-Soviet economies like the Baltic and Eastern European Republics, the rubble of Indian neo-liberal policies, the economic mantras of an entire generation are going up in smoke. For the left it should be a time of unrivalled opportunity.

    Take as an example the shopping mall, which changed the American landscape within the course of a generation. The left, by and large, never much cared for malls. They represented privatized space, the collapse of the public realm, and the freedoms — of association and public protest — protected in public space. Malls, whether in strip or covered form, symbolized a conversion of people from citizens to consumers, the death of Main Street, architecture reduced to utter banality.

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  • InI 12:01 on March 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Preparing for Civil Unrest in America By Michel Chossudovsky 

    18 March, 2009 – Global Research

    Legislation to Establish Internment Camps on US Military Bases

    The Economic and Social Crisis

    The financial meltdown has unleashed a latent and emergent social crisis across the United States. 

    What is at stake is the fraudulent confiscation of lifelong savings and pension funds, the appropriation of tax revenues to finance the trillion dollar “bank bailouts”, which ultimately serve to line the pockets of the richest people in America.   

    This economic crisis is in large part the result of financial manipulation and outright fraud to the detriment of entire populations, to a renewed wave of corporate bankruptcies, mass unemployment and poverty.

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  • InI 11:31 on March 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    The Real AIG Conspiracy By Prof. Michael Hudson 

    18 March, 2009 – Global Research

    It may seem odd, but the public outrage against $135 million in AIG bonuses is a godsend to Wall Street, AID scoundrels included. How can the media be so preoccupied with the discovery that there is self-serving greed to be found in the financial sector? Every TV channel and every newspaper in the country, from right to left, have made these bonuses the lead story over the past two days.

    What is wrong with this picture? Is there not something over-inflated about the outrage led most vociferously by Senator Charles Schumer and Rep. Barney Frank, the two leading shills for the bank giveaways over the past year? And does Pres. Obama perhaps find it convenient that finally, at long last, he has been able to criticize something that he believes Wall Street has done wrong? Even the Wall Street Journal has gotten into the act. The government’s takeover of AIG, it pointed out, “uses the firm as a conduit to bail out other institutions.” So much more greed is involved than just that of AIG employees. The firm owed much more to other players – abroad as well as on Wall Street – than the assets it had. That is what drove it to insolvency. And popular opposition has been rising to how Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain could have banded together to support the bailout that, in retrospect, amounts to trillions and trillions of dollars thrown “down the drain.” Not really down the drain at all, of course – but given to financial speculators on the winning “smart” side of AIG’s bad financial gambles.

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  • InI 11:27 on March 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Martinique General Strike Ends in Victory Richard Fidler 

    Mobilizations, victories in overseas colonies set example for French workers.

    A 38-day general strike in the Caribbean colony of Martinique ended March 14 with the signing of a protocol between the government and the February 5 Collective, a coalition of unions and other social movements named after the day the strike began. The agreement grants the coalition’s key demands. About 20,000 people celebrated the historic victory in a march through the streets.

    AFP reported that “the signing ceremony drew a crowd of thousands who gathered outside the island’s head administrative office. They repeatedly chanted a slogan ‘Matinik leve,’ or ‘Martinique stand up’ in the local Creole language.”

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  • InI 17:06 on March 18, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Amandla! TV – Can we eat our vote? 

    Here is the promo for our first production from Amandla! TV For more from amandla visit http://www.amandla.org.za


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  • InI 14:21 on March 18, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    "Keynes, Capitalism, and the Crisis" 

    “Keynes, Capitalism, and the Crisis”: “Keynes, Capitalism, and the Crisis
    John Bellamy Foster Interviewed by Brian Ashley, Co-Managing Editor of Amandla
    John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, and author (with Fred Magdoff) of The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (Monthly Review Press, 2009).

    Amandla: As governments across the world spend trillions to help private capital survive the global financial crisis, is it not misleading to talk of a shift to Keynesian policies?

    JBF: I think there has been, as Paul Krugman says, a ‘return of depression economics,’ and in that sense we can talk about a revival of broadly ‘Keynesian’ policies.  Keynes advocated expansive fiscal policy and deficit financing in a depression, and all governments are now seeking to put such expansive policies in place to some degree — although generally not on a big enough scale.  Also Keynes clearly advocated government attempts to reflate the economy in the face of deflationary pressures, in the context of the banking crisis of the early 1930s.  So in this sense too we can talk about a return to Keynesian economics.

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  • InI 13:48 on March 18, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Pride and Prejudice By Eric Walberg 

    The Zionists are playing a dangerous game by scuttling Freeman’s appointment, warns Eric Walberg

    The remarkable hegemony of Zionists in US — and by implication — world politics continues unabated, as demonstrated starkly by the withdrawal of Chas Freeman as United States President Barack Obama’s nominee to chair his National Intelligence Council (NIC).

    Unlike cabinet positions, the NIC chair is not subject to Senate approval, but when Freeman was subjected to a campaign of slander led by AIPAC functionary Steve Rosen, joined by a chorus of senators, he withdrew, relating in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) the “libelous distortions of my record”, the “efforts to smear me and destroy my credibility … by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country.”

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  • InI 11:56 on March 18, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Dynamic Duo: Green Jobs Meets the Solidarity Economy By Carl Davidson 

    16 March, 2009

    A Review of ‘Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems’ By Van Jones, Harper-Collins, 2008

    green-obama.jpgIt’s time to link the newly insurgent U.S. Green Jobs movement with the worldwide efforts for the solidarity economy. Both are answering the call to fight the deepening global recession, and both face common adversaries in the failed ‘race to the bottom,’ environment-be-damned policies of global neoliberalism.

    That’s the imperative facing left-progressive organizers with connections to these two important grassroots movements. It’s even more important in the wake of the appointment of a key leader of one of these movements, Van Jones of ‘Green For All’, to a top environmental and urban policy post in the Obama administration.

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  • InI 10:26 on March 18, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Documentary films about Palestine and her people 

    17 March, 2009

    pal-movies.jpg2008 marked the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel and the simultaneous destruction of Palestinian civil and political society. The two events are as intimately connected as two sides of a coin, yet each side offers a distinct narrative that remains at odds with the accounts of the other. Feelings of belonging and claims of ownership irrevocably separate, yet permanently connect Arabs and Jews in their struggle for a land that is called Palestine by one group and Israel by the other. Each of the two cultures wants to hold on to every inch of land claimed by its opponent. The Palestinians strongly feel that they belong to the land, while the Israelis insist that the land belongs to them.

    The narrative of displacement and experiences in exile of the modern Palestinians remains relatively unfamiliar to most Westerners and especially to the majority of Americans. By contrast, Israel’s narrative of rebuilding a homeland for the Jews has been deeply imbedded in the Western psyche and continues to dominate the political discourse regarding the Palestinian / Israeli conflict. The documentary films we create at SittingCrow Productions explore the personal narratives and artistic expressions of Palestinians.

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  • InI 10:15 on March 18, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    The Tesco 2: stop the killing, stop the crime, Free Free Palestine! 

    17 March, 2009

    tesco.jpgThe Tesco 2 are Dee Murphy and Greg Wilkinson who kicked off a campaign to boycott Israeli goods by going into their local Tesco store, filling a trolley with dates produced on illegal Zionist settlements on the West Bank, taking them out without paying, tipping the dates on the ground and spraying them with red dye, then waiting for the police to arrest them. Dee is in court in early April. The police did not, for some unknown reason arrest Greg, but things have taken a turn for the worse as the following message I received from Greg last night shows…..

    WASTING POLICE TIME

    Police raided three houses yesterday and arrested two people – including me – on suspicion of ‘conspiring to commit racially aggravated criminal damage.’ They seized three computers and a lot of papers relating to Palestine/Israel affairs. They’ve kept my computer, which may mean they pick up some email addresses. Luckily the papers with addresses and phone numbers were out of the house by the time they searched it.

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  • InI 09:27 on March 18, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    COHA: Salvadoran Presidential Election – A Brief Analysis of the Implications of the FMLN’s Big Win 

    Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) candidate Mauricio Funes emerged as the narrow victor in El Salvador’s March 15 presidential election, with 51 percent of the vote. Funes overcame the fiercely negative and patently unfair campaign waged by the opposition National Republican Alliance (ARENA) and other right-wing organizations backing their candidate, Rodrigo Ávila. Those who were worried, including COHA, that a massive plot would be hatched by ARENA to steal votes in order to throw the race to Ávila were proven mistaken, and first reports indicate that electoral tampering was not a major factor in the contest.

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  • InI 19:23 on March 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Reading Lenin in Modern Rome By Gaither Stewart with Patrice Greanville 

    14 March, 2009

    A little bit of Leninism for breakfast gives you the strength of a hundred camels in the courtyard. (My adaptation of a Paul Bowles’ Arab adage)

    And then this, straight out of the horse’s mouth:

    ‘It is more pleasant and useful to go through the experience of the revolution than to write about it.’ (Vladimir Lenin)

    lenin.jpg(Rome) Leftists like to cite Lenin. To quote Marx is to delve into the theory of Socialism/Communism. But Lenin is another cup of tea. You get into Lenin and you’re already in revolution. When you read Lenin’s The State and Revolution, which contains the core of Leninist thought, you are no longer in the world of socio-economic theory. This powerful text offers insights into Leninist policies and elaborated Lenin’s interpretation of Marxism, above all the class conflict, but also the crushing of the bourgeois state and the establishment and role of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

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