You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2006.
by James Howard Kunstler
TomPaine.com
It
by Stephen Lendman
sjlendman.blogspot.com
I’ve said before it’s easy to know what the empire is thinking (especially its powerful movers and shakers sitting in corporate boardrooms) by reading the Wall Street Journal daily as I do. Despite its heavy pro-empire bias, readers can also get some real news and information - something nearly impossible elsewhere in the corporate media especially from the venerable New York Times I’ve before labeled the closest thing we have in the US to an official ministry of information and propaganda.
I’ll return to that subject another time, but for now I want to highlight the May 25 front page feature article in the Journal titled “New President Has Bolivia Marching to Chavez’s Beat.” The sub-title is even worse - “Venezuelan Populist Pushes Anti-US Latin Alliance; Has He Gone Too Far?” And below that and still headlined - “Cuban Doctors in the House.”
I hope readers understand from that language what’s quite clear to me: a virtual call to arms against Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, two leaders who likely more than any others believe that since their people elected them, they have an obligation to serve them and not the interests of a belligerent and dominant Northern neighbor.
Peter Hudis
April-May 2006
NEWS & LETTERS
At a moment when the Bush administration is facing a quagmire in Iraq and growing opposition to its policies at home, Latin America may not appear to be its central area of concern. Yet events there are becoming as worrisome to it as those in the Middle East.
A left-wing government under Evo Morales took power in Bolivia in December; a radical who favors nationalizing U.S. mining interests, Ollanta Humala, is hoping to become the president of Peru in April; and a left-of-center government may take power in Mexico if Andr
Nirit Ben-Ari
May 2006
World War 4 Report
So, what do “democracy” and “sovereignty” mean for Haiti and Palestine?
To put it bluntly, nothing. “Democracy is good as long as you choose who we want you to choose” is the message that both Haitians and Palestinians are getting from the world. If it is the wrong candidate, then bye-bye democracy, hello dictatorship, repression, and violence. You play by our rules, or get a hammer on the head.”
On February 7 and January 25, Haitians and Palestinians (respectively) went to the polls. Haiti is an independent republic since 1804, and one of the founding members of the United Nations. “Palestine” is a territory that has been occupied by the Turks, then the British, and now the Israelis. It’s not an independent country and not a member in the United Nations. Despite these apparent differences, Haitians and Palestinians share much in common–in particular, their belief in the democratic process. Sadly, their ways of practicing democracy also share something in common; the disdain of most of the “civilized” world.
Stewart Steinhauer
May 14, 2006
Seven Oaks
First the facts: Canada is a settler state located in the northern portion of Turtle Island, formed out of two European colonies established here in the seventeenth century, one by Great Britain and one by France. These colonies were established on the basis of the Doctrine Of Discovery, itself an outgrowth of the European decision to de-construct the original Peoples of Turtle Island as both individual human beings, and as collections of human beings living together in rule of law type societies, and to re-construct these erased people and Peoples as a monolithic dependent population known henceforth as
Executives at Canada’s Self-Proclaimed “Largest” War Manufacturer Place Building on Lockdown, Refuse Dialogue as They Continue Work on “Low Cost Precision Kill Vehicles”
BURLINGTON, ONTARIO, MAY 15, 2006 — Nine peace-seekers were arrested today on the grounds of military manufacturer L- 3 Wescam for seeking a dialogue with company executives on transforming their business to purely peaceful uses. During a lengthy and exhaustively mobile civil resistance action, a group of people from Homes not Bombs and the Mother’s Day Coalition for Peace darted inbetween private security and, eventually, Halton police officers as they sought entry at the 125,000 square-foot facility.
As they sought dialogue, another group of about 30 people gathered at the main entrance to Wescam for a moving ceremony led by Caledon East students commemorating the countless thousands killed by the likes of Wescam technology in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Venezuela’s president is using oil revenues to liberate the poor - no wonder his enemies want to overthrow him
John Pilger
Saturday May 13, 2006
The Guardian
We lived and died without real education and running water, and food we couldn’t afford. When we fell ill, the weakest died. In the east of the city, where the mansions are, we were invisible, or we were feared. Now I can read and write my name, and so much more; and whatever the rich and their media say, we have planted the seeds of true democracy, and I am full of joy that I have lived to witness it.”
–Mavis Mendez, age 95
I have spent the past three weeks filming in the hillside barrios of Caracas, in streets and breeze-block houses that defy gravity and torrential rain and emerge at night like fireflies in the fog. Caracas is said to be one of the world’s toughest cities, yet I have known no fear; the poorest have welcomed my colleagues and me with a warmth characteristic of ordinary Venezuelans but also with the unmistakable confidence of a people who know that change is possible and who, in their everyday lives, are reclaiming noble concepts long emptied of their meaning in the west: “reform”, “popular democracy”, “equity”, “social justice” and, yes, “freedom.”
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Friday 12 May 2006
Within the last week, Karl Rove told President Bush and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, as well as a few other high level administration officials, that he will be indicted in the CIA leak case and will immediately resign his White House job when the special counsel publicly announces the charges against him, according to sources.
Details of Rove’s discussions with the president and Bolten have spread through the corridors of the White House where low-level staffers and senior officials were trying to determine how the indictment would impact an administration that has been mired in a number of high-profile political scandals for nearly a year, said a half-dozen White House aides and two senior officials who work at the Republican National Committee.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, sources confirmed Rove’s indictment is imminent. These individuals requested anonymity saying they were not authorized to speak publicly about Rove’s situation. A spokesman in the White House press office said they would not comment on “wildly speculative rumors.”
Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, did not return a call for comment Friday.
Andrew Orkin
Ottawa Citizen
May 11, 2006
Is it not high time for the dominant society — the non-native “rest of us” — to realize that the corrosive, transcontinental 200-year-old legal and physical blockade and siege by the Crown and its settlers of entire aboriginal societies and their people, governments, economies, legal systems, territories and resources is still under way?”
