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There isn't a Biggest Story for Today, yet.
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| Thursday, November 19 | | · | When electoral fraud is met by congratulations |
| Tuesday, November 10 | | · | Simon Mann’s coup plot: nasty, brutal and posh |
| Wednesday, November 04 | | · | US can't teach us anything |
| Saturday, October 10 | | · | Honduras and the battle for the Americas |
| · | Barack Obama, The Nobel Peace Prize and the Wrong discussion |
| Wednesday, September 30 | | · | Democracy not in ballot boxes |
| Tuesday, September 22 | | · | South Africa, Namibia stand by Zimbabwe |
| Monday, September 14 | | · | A Wrecking Ball of Imperialism |
| Wednesday, September 02 | | · | Caribbean Rastafari Organisation |
| Friday, August 21 | | · | The New Rasta, A New Lost Nation |
Older Articles
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By Murray Polner
February 08, 2010 - hnn.us
Suddenly and surprisingly, we have a Bush-like Obama Doctrine. To the applause of liberal hawks and formerly critical neocons, the president declared in his Nobel Peace Prize speech that the U.S. will continue to wage war—though naturally, only “just” war—anywhere and against anyone it chooses in a never-ending struggle against the forces of evil. His antiwar supporters can take seats on the sidelines. It’s all reminiscent of John F. Kennedy and the prescient George Ball, and afterward Ball and Lyndon Johnson. In the early ’60s, JFK—reluctantly, we are told by his admirers—decided to send 16,000 “trainers” to Vietnam to teach the South Vietnamese how to play soldier and to stop the Communists from sweeping over Southeast Asia. Vast quantities of money and assorted advisers were shipped without accountability to the corrupt gang of thugs running and ruining that country.
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Caribbean: Freedom Rider: Useless Aid, No Donation Without Agitation
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By Margaret Kimberley
January 27, 2010 - blackagendareport.com
“Dollars must come with demands of non-interference in Haiti’s affairs and demands of accountability to charitable organizations.”
A telethon hosted by celebrities succeeded in raising more than $57 million in funds for the relief of Haiti earthquake victims. Yet that sum and the many millions more donated by individuals around the world will do little to relieve Haiti’s plight.
Haitians are living in their latest hellish incarnation created by American meddling and the crushing of that nation’s democracy. As long as the United States directs Haiti’s affairs, and empowers a corrupt elite instead of the will of the masses, suffering will continue whether caused by natural or human-made disaster.
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By Cynthia McKinney
January 22, 2010 - globalresearch.ca
President Obama's response to the tragedy in Haiti has been robust in military deployment and puny in what the Haitians need most: food; first responders and their specialized equipment; doctors and medical facilities and equipment; and engineers, heavy equipment, and heavy movers. Sadly, President Obama is dispatching Presidents Bush and Clinton, and thousands of Marines and U.S. soldiers. By contrast, Cuba has over 400 doctors on the ground and is sending in more; Cubans, Argentinians, Icelanders, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and many others are already on the ground working – saving lives and treating the injured. Senegal has offered land to Haitians willing to relocate to Africa.
The United States, on the day after the tragedy struck, confirmed that an entire Marine Expeditionary Force was being considered "to help restore order," when the "disorder" had been caused by an earthquake striking Haiti; not since 1751, 1770, 1842, 1860, and 1887 had Haiti experienced an earthquake. But, I remember the bogus reports of chaos and violence that led to the deployment of military assets, including Blackwater, in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. One Katrina survivor noted that the people needed food and shelter and the US government sent men with guns. Much to my disquiet, it seems, here we go again. From the very beginning, US assistance to Haiti has looked to me more like an invasion than a humanitarian relief operation.
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Caribbean: Misinformation and Racism Hamper Recovery Efforts in Haiti
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Doctor: Misinformation and Racism Have Frozen Recovery Effort at General Hospital in Port-au-Prince
By Democracy Now!
January 19, 2010
"There are no security issues," says Dr. Evan Lyon of Partners in Health, reporting from the General Hospital in Port-Au-Prince in Haiti, where 1,000 people are in need of operations. Lyon said the reports of violence in the city have been overblown by the media and have affected the delivery of aid and medical services.
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JUAN GONZALEZ: Amy Goodman is in Haiti, and we'll be joining
her in a few minutes. But first, we turn to a voice from one hospital
in Port-au-Prince that was badly destroyed by last week's earthquake.
The General Hospital is three blocks from the crumbling National
Palace.
Former President Bill Clinton visited the hospital Monday, as
hundreds of people with broken limbs and multiple fractures were
waiting for medical supplies to arrive.
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By Benjamin Dangl
January 19, 2010 - towardfreedom.com
US corporations, private mercenaries, Washington and the International Monetary Fund are using the crisis in Haiti to make a profit, promote unpopular neoliberal policies, and extend military and economic control over the Haitian people.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, with much of the infrastructure and government services destroyed, Haitians have relied on each other for the relief efforts, working together to pull their neighbors, friends and loved ones from the rubble. One report from IPS News in Haiti explained, "In the day following the quake, there was no widespread violence. Guns, knives and theft weren't seen on the streets, lined only with family after family carrying their belongings. They voiced their anger and frustration with sad songs that echoed throughout the night, not their fists."
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Caribbean: Reparations, not handouts, for Haiti
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By Raffique Shah
January 17, 2010
SO we cry for Haiti again. Yet another natural disaster, this time an earthquake of horrendous magnitude, has all but flattened what was left of that 'cussed' country. In the Caribbean, so full of heart are we, even those who survive barely above the poverty line give, be it cash or clothes or food. But will our generosity, will the US$1 billion or so in help that will flow over the next year make a difference to 4.5 million of seven million people who live on less than US$1 day?
I think not. All we can achieve is cosmetic relief of the flimsiest type: Some food and water to barely keep alive those who survived death only to end up in living hell. In the short term, the USA gives $100 million plus on-the-ground equipment and trained personnel. We applaud. The IMF matches the US and again we sing hosannas to this agency of death. As for our Prime Minister, he commits US$1 million-far, far less than it cost for the cultural show to open one of the international conferences held here last year. 'Things tight, boy!' he says.
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Caribbean: Haitian Earthquake Disaster: Made in the USA
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Why the Blood Is on Our Hands
By Ted Rall
January 14, 2010 - CommonDreams.org
As grim accounts of the earthquake in Haiti came in, the accounts in U.S.-controlled state media all carried the same descriptive sentence: "Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere..."
Gee, I wonder how that happened?
You'd think Haiti would be loaded. After all, it made a lot of people rich.
How did Haiti get so poor? Despite a century of American colonialism, occupation, and propping up corrupt dictators? Even though the CIA staged coups d'état against every democratically elected president they ever had?
It's an important question. An earthquake isn't just an earthquake. The same 7.0 tremor hitting San Francisco wouldn't kill nearly as many people as in Port-au-Prince.
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By Ashley Smith
January 14, 2010 - socialistworker.org
A devastating earthquake, the worst in 200 years, struck Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, laying waste to the city and killing untold numbers of people. The quake measured 7.0 on the Richter scale, and detonated more than 30 aftershocks, all more than 4.5 in magnitude, through the night and into Wednesday morning.
The earthquake toppled poorly constructed houses, hotels, hospitals and even the capital city's main political buildings, including the presidential palace. The collapse of so many structures sent a giant cloud into the sky, which hovered over the city, raining dust down onto the wasteland below.
According to some estimates, more than 100,000 people may have died, in a metropolis of 2 million people. Those that survived are living in the streets, afraid to return inside any building that remains standing.
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If we are serious about assisting this devastated land we must stop trying to control and exploit it
By Peter Hallward
January 13, 2010 - guardian.co.uk
Any large city in the world would have suffered extensive damage from an earthquake on the scale of the one that ravaged Haiti's capital city on Tuesday afternoon, but it's no accident that so much of Port-au-Prince now looks like a war zone. Much of the devastation wreaked by this latest and most calamitous disaster to befall Haiti is best understood as another thoroughly manmade outcome of a long and ugly historical sequence.
The country has faced more than its fair share of catastrophes. Hundreds died in Port-au-Prince in an earthquake back in June 1770, and the huge earthquake of 7 May 1842 may have killed 10,000 in the northern city of Cap Haitien alone. Hurricanes batter the island on a regular basis, mostly recently in 2004 and again in 2008; the storms of September 2008 flooded the town of Gonaïves and swept away much of its flimsy infrastructure, killing more than a thousand people and destroying many thousands of homes. The full scale of the destruction resulting from this earthquake may not become clear for several weeks. Even minimal repairs will take years to complete, and the long-term impact is incalculable.
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By Tichaona Nhamoyebonde
January 07, 2010 - The Herald
AFRICAN revolutionaries now have to sleep with one eye open because the United States of America is not stopping at anything in its bid to establish Africom, a highly-equipped US army that will be permanently resident in Africa to oversee the country's imperialist interests.
Towards the end of last year, the US government intensified its efforts to bring a permanent army to settle in Africa, dubbed the African Command (Africom) as a latest tool for the subtle recolonisation of Africa.
Just before end of last year, General William E. Garret, Commander US Army for Africa, met with defence attaches from all African embassies in Washington to lure them into selling the idea of an American army based in Africa to their governments.
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By Phyllis Johnson
December 21, 2009 - The Herald
THIS is the first in a series of eight articles on the events of late 1979 and early 1980.
Thirty years ago, on December 21 1979, an agreement was signed in London that set in motion a series of events that put Zimbabwe on the course to where it is today.
The signatures appended reluctantly to that agreement beneath the chandeliers and subterfuge of Lancaster House ended the war in a place that some called Rhodesia and signalled a different route to independence for a country that the majority called Zimbabwe.
The 103 days of pressure and posturing conducted by the adroit Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, Lord Carrington, from September 10 until December 21 1979, were notable by the avoidance of the main issue in a 90-year-old dispute.
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Psychology: When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like
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By Annalee Newitz
December 18, 2009 - http://io9.com
Critics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it's about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy. Spoilers...
Whether Avatar is racist is a matter for debate. Regardless of where you come down on that question, it's undeniable that the film - like alien apartheid flick District 9, released earlier this year - is emphatically a fantasy about race. Specifically, it's a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people. Avatar and scifi films like it give us the opportunity to answer the question: What do white people fantasize about when they fantasize about racial identity?
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South America: Venezuelan President's Speech on Climate Change in Copenhagen
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By Hugo Chavez
Copenhagen, Kingdom of Denmark
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez:
Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, Excellencies, friends, I promise that I will not talk more than most have spoken this afternoon. Allow me an initial comment which I would have liked to make as part of the previous point which was expressed by the delegations of Brazil, China, India, and Bolivia. We were there asking to speak but it was not possible. Bolivia's representative said, my salute of course to Comrade President Evo Morales, who is there, President of the Republic of Bolivia.
[Audience applause]
She said among other things the following, I noted it here, she said the text presented is not democratic, it is not inclusive.
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By William Blum
December 10, 2009
All the crying from the left about how Obama "the peace candidate" has now become "a war president" ... Whatever are they talking about? Here's what I wrote in this report in August 2008, during the election campaign:
We find Obama threatening, several times, to attack Iran if they don't do what the United States wants them to do nuclear-wise; threatening more than once to attack Pakistan if their anti-terrorist policies are not tough enough or if there would be a regime change in the nuclear-armed country not to his liking; calling for a large increase in US troops and tougher policies for Afghanistan; wholly and unequivocally embracing Israel as if it were the 51st state.
Why should anyone be surprised at Obama's foreign policy in the White House? He has not even banned torture, contrary to what his supporters would fervently have us believe. If further evidence were needed, we have the November 28 report in the Washington Post: "Two Afghan teenagers held in U.S. detention north of Kabul this year said they were beaten by American guards, photographed naked, deprived of sleep and held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to the Taliban." This is but the latest example of the continuance of torture under the new administration.
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A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
November 24, 2009 - blackagendareport.com
"U.S.-allied drug dealers are put in charge of the police and border patrol, while their rivals are placed on American hit lists."
If you're looking for the chief kingpin in the Afghanistan heroin trade, it's the United States. The American mission has devolved to a Mafiosi-style arrangement that poisons every military and political alliance entered into by the U.S. and its puppet government in Kabul. It is a gangster occupation, in which U.S.-allied drug dealers are put in charge of the police and border patrol, while their rivals are placed on American hit lists, marked for death or capture. As a result, Afghanistan has been transformed into an opium plantation that supplies 90 percent of the world's heroin.
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