China’s Growing Independence and the New World Order by Noam Chomsky

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by Noam Chomsky
http://www.inthesetimes.com
Oct. 5, 2010

Of all the “threats” to world order, the most consistent is democracy, unless it is under imperial control, and more generally, the assertion of independence. These fears have guided imperial power throughout history.

In South America, Washington’s traditional backyard, the subjects are increasingly disobedient. Their steps toward independence advanced further in February with the formation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, which includes all states in the hemisphere apart from the U.S. and Canada.

Coup In Ecuador + President Rafael Correa Rescued/Coup Thwarted by Eva Golinger

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Updated

by Eva Golinger
Postcards from the Revolution
4 PM
Sept. 30, 2010

EDITOR’S NOTE

Follow @Evagolinger on Twitter for up to the minute updates on the Ecuador situation.

A third coup d’etat is underway against a nation member of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA), a Latin American bloc of nations that opposes US hegemony in the region and has created new mechanisms for trade and integration based on principles of solidarity and independence from imperial powers.

Obama Administration Should Oppose Any Attempted Coup in Ecuador: CEPR Co-Director + Eva Golinger: Coup D’état in Ecuador

Image by thejourney1972 via Flickr

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www.cepr.net
September 30, 2010

For Immediate Release: September 30, 2010
Contact: Dan Beeton, 202-239-1460

Washington, D.C. – There are currently reports of a possible attempted coup d’etat underway in Ecuador. There have been violent protests by police and some elements of the military, reports that President Correa has been injured, and reports that the air force has closed down a number of airports.

The Organization of American States will convene an emergency meeting at 2:30 Eastern Standard Time in Washington D.C., to consider the situation.

Colombia and Venezuela make peace

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www.therealnews.com
August 14, 2010

Forrest Hylton: Is Colombia’s new leader stepping back from U.S. plan to isolate Chavez?

Forrest Hylton teaches history and politics at the Universidad de los Andes (Bogota). He is the author of Evil Hour in Colombia (Verso, 2006), and with Sinclair Thomson, co-author of Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics (Verso, 2007). He has contributed to New Left Review, NACLA Report on the Americas, and CounterPunch, and his short fiction and translations have appeared in the Brooklyn Rail. His first novel, Vanishing Acts: A Tragedy, which won the Ben Reitman Award from CityWorks Press, is forthcoming in 2010.

The War On Democracy by John Pilger (2007; must-see)

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In case you missed seeing this, I’m reposting.

Dandelion Salad ICH 1 hr 33 min 36 sec – Aug 22, 2007 ‘The War on Democracy’ is John Pilger’s first major film for the cinema – in a career that has produced more than 55 television documentaries. Set in Latin America and the US, it explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. “The film tells a universal story,” says Pilger, “analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the … Read More

American Designs in Latin America By Timothy V. Gatto

By Timothy V. Gatto
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
liberalpro.blogspot.com
July 28, 2010

The United States has many fences in Latin America that need mending.  You can see by the attention the U.S. is paying to Costa Rica, Colombia and Panama that the government in Washington is keenly aware of this and is responding in the only way it knows how to respond…militarily. This is the only response that America knows. Not that it hasn’t worked, since the end of World War II, the United States has been involved in overthrowing a government in every nation in Latin America, some more than once. There has been more than one career spent in American clandestine organizations participating in regime changes from start to finish. By now the United States should have it down to a fine art. In fact, Americans thought that they had the formula for regime change down to a fine science until 2002 when they attempted to overthrow Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, there things went horribly wrong. The people there suddenly decided for themselves that they didn’t want any part of the right-wing government about to be forced upon them and marched Chavez back to the Palace and reinstalled him.

Will the U.S. Annex Latin America? By Timothy V. Gatto

By Timothy V. Gatto
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
liberalpro.blogspot.com
July 28, 2010

The United States seems to be rushing into potential confrontations all over the globe. When the voters rejected the policies of George W. Bush by voting for Barack Obama, many people thought that this country would find a way to communicate with the rest of the World instead of deploying soldiers and weapons of war. Clearly this has not been the case. The United States of America has turned this planet into a playground for the Pentagon and we have seen an influx of soldiers and materials for waging war filling the airfields of Colombia, Costa Rica, Afghanistan, Poland and scores of other nations that have allowed their nations to be forward operating areas for this American Empire.

US and Colombia plan to attack Venezuela + Venezuela will suspend all oil shipments to the US in the event of an attack by Eva Golinger

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by Eva Golinger
Global Research, July 26, 2010
Postcards from the Revolution, July 24, 2010

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denounced this Saturday US plans to attack his country and overthrow his government. During a ceremony celebrating the 227th birthday of Independence hero Simon Bolivar, Chavez read from a secret memo he had been sent from an unnamed source inside the United States.

“Old friend, I haven’t seen you in years. As I said to you in my three prior letters, the idea remains the generation of a conflict on your western border”, read Chavez from the secret missive.

“The latest events confirm all, or almost all, of what those here discussed as well as other information that I have obtained from above”, the letter continued.

Oliver Stone Tackles Latin America’s Political Upheaval in South of the Border

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Democracy Now!
June 21, 2010

Academy Award-Winning Filmmaker Oliver Stone Tackles Latin America’s Political Upheaval in “South of the Border”, US Financial Crisis in Sequel to Iconic “Wall Street”

South Atlantic: Britain May Provoke New Conflict With Argentina by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
Stop NATO -Opposition to global militarism
February 23, 2010

On February 22 two major developments occurred in the Americas south of the Rio Grande. The two-day Rio Group summit opened in Mexico and Great Britain started drilling for oil 60 miles north of the Falklands Islands, known as Las Malvinas to Argentina.

The meeting in Mexico was identified as a Unity Summit because for the first time the 24 members of the Rio Group (minus Honduras, not invited because of the illegitimacy of its post-coup regime) – Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela – were joined by the fifteen members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM): Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago. (Haiti, Jamaica and Suriname are members of both organizations.)

Ahead of the summit the Financial Times wrote, “The Mexican-led initiative, a clear sign of Latin America’s growing confidence as a region, will exclude both the US and Canada. Some observers believe it could even eventually rival the 35-member Organisation of American States (OAS), which includes the US and Canada and has been the principal forum for hemispheric issues during the past half century.” [1]

Presidential ‘Peacemaking’ in Latin America By Noam Chomsky

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By Noam Chomsky
In These Times
Jan. 5, 2010

Barack Obama, the fourth U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize, joins the others in the long tradition of peacemaking so long as it serves U.S. interests.

All four presidents left their imprint on “our little region over here that has never bothered anybody,” as U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson characterized the hemisphere in 1945.

Given the Obama administration’s stance toward the elections in Honduras in November, it may be worthwhile to examine the record.

[…]

President Barack Obama separated the United States from almost all of Latin America and Europe by accepting the military coup that overthrew Honduran democracy last June.

The coup reflected a “yawning political and socioeconomic divide,” The New York Times reported. For the “small upper class,” Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was becoming a threat to what they call “democracy,” namely, the rule of “the most powerful business and political forces in the country.”

[…]

via Presidential ‘Peacemaking’ in Latin America — In These Times

see

Honduras: The Coup That Never Happened by Tyler Shipley

Noam Chomsky: History of US Rule in Latin America

Honduran elections exposed

Noam Chomsky on Dandelion Salad

Clinton: Latin American countries should think twice about establishing links with Iran

Propaganda Alert

compiled by Cem Ertür
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
12 December 2009


1) Clinton: Latin American countries should think twice about establishing links with Iran (December 2009)

from the archives:

2) US official: Military coup in Honduras is a lesson for the region not to follow Venezuela’s path (July 2009)

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“We also are well aware of Iran’s interests in promoting itself with a number of other [Latin American] countries [such as] Venezuela and Bolivia […]

[…] I think that if people want to flirt with Iran, they should take a look at what the consequences might well be for them, and we hope that they will think twice, […] ”

[US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speech at the at the First Diplomacy Briefing Series Meeting, Washington D.C., 11 December 2009]  [1]

___________________

Noam Chomsky: The Unipolar Moment and the Culture of Imperialism

Dandelion Salad

Transcript

***

joefriendly
December 03, 2009

Noam Chomsky delivers the 5th Annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture: The Unipolar Moment and the Culture of Imperialism at Columbia University School for International Affairs for the Heyman Center for the Humanities. After paying homage to Edward Said’s stressing imperialism as central to our culture Chomsky builds his case with telling quotes of American leaders rationalizing and denying extermination of Native Americans on through US terrorism in Latin and South America, like in Chile, Brazil, El Salvador, Panama, Nicaragua, and the Middle East.

Chavez’s historic call for international socialist unity by Federico Fuentes

Dandelion Salad

Posted with permission from Green Left Weekly

by Federico Fuentes
Green Left
Caracas
27 November 2009

Addressing delegates at the International Encounter of Left Parties held in Caracas, November 19-21, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said that with the capitalist crisis and threat of war risking the future of humanity, “the people are clamoring” for greater unity of those willing to fight for socialism.

Chavez used his speech on November 20 to the conference, which involved delegates from 55 left groups from 31 countries, to call for a new international socialist organisation to unite left groups and social movements.

“The time has come for us to organise the Fifth International”, he said.

Neoliberalism and the Dynamics of Capitalist Development in Latin America By James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer

Dandelion Salad

By James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer
Axisoflogic.com
Thursday, Nov 19, 2009

Editor’s Note: All those interested in the political, economic and social directions being taken by the people and governments of Latin American states will do well to invest time in reading this treatise by James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer. Those who think they understand the future of the left on the continent may be surprised by what is happening in countries ranging from right wing governments such as Colombia to leftist states like Venezuela after reading this document. Time and energy given to building socialism and combatting the Global Corporate Empire everywhere in the world will be informed by neo-capitalist movements across Latin America. This analysis deserves careful study.
– Les Blough, Editor

 

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(Editing and emphases added by Axis of Logic)

 

An analysis of the dynamics of capitalist development over the last two decades has been overshadowed by an all too prevalent “globalization” discourse. It appears that much of the Left has bought into this discourse, tacitly accepting globalization as an irresistible fact and that in many ways it is progressive, needing only for the corporate agenda to be derailed and an abandonment of neoliberalism. This is certainly the case in Latin America where the Left has focused its concern almost exclusively on the bankruptcy of “neoliberalism”, with reference to the agenda pursued and a package of policy reforms implemented by virtually every government in the region by the dint of ideology if not the demands of the global capital or political opportunism. In this concern, imperialism and capitalism per se, as opposed to neoliberalism, have been pushed off the agenda, and as a result, excepting Chavéz’s Bolivarian Revolution, the project of building socialism has virtually disappeared as an object of theory and practice.