South America

Haitians Overwhelmingly Reject Electoral Sham
by Stephen Lendman

On April 19, sham elections were held to fill 12 open seats in the 30-member Haitian Senate, but most Haitians refused to go along.

Earlier in February on procedural grounds, Haiti's Provisional Election Council (CEP) disqualified Fanmi Lavalas (FL) candidates from participating, the party most Haitians support.

Mass outrage and apprehension showed up in Priorities Project (HPP) pre-election polls with only 5% of eligible voters stating an intention to participate.

HPP's Jacob Francois told Inter Press Service (IPS):

"We organized our census primarily through town hall meetings, where organizers spoke to people in groups and individually. From this we tallied the opinions of what we estimated to be 65,000 from an eight million population." From this sampling, a 5% participation rate was calculated.

By Dave Lindorff

President Obama deserves credit for breaking the half-century-long taboo in American politics of dealing with Cuba, and meeting with Raul Castro, Cuba’s current leader. He also deserves credit for dealing in a friendly manner with Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

But what is this crap about “talking with” our enemies or with countries that have been “hostile” towards us?

It is certainly be true that America doesn’t like Communism, and doesn’t like having properties owned by its citizens taken over, which happened in the wake of the Cuban revolution, but nationalization is a right that many sovereign nations have exercised in their national interest, and besides that, what has Cuba ever done that would show it to be an enemy of the US?

What Can Obama Do in Latin America?
By Greg Grandin | TomDispatch.com

What if Barack Obama had picked the Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel or Democracy Now! anchor Amy Goodman to advise him at the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago this week? Unlikely, to say the least, but 75 years ago President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did something just like that, tapping a former Nation editor and fierce critic of U.S. militarism to advise his administration on Latin American policy. As a result -- consider this your curious, yet little known, fact of the day -- anti-imperialism saved the American empire.

FDR took office in 1933 looking not just to stabilize the U.S. economy, but to calm a world inflamed: Japan had invaded Manchuria the year before; the Nazis had seized power in Germany; European imperialists were tightening their holds over their colonies; and the Soviet Union had declared its militant "third period" strategy, imagining that global capitalism, plunged into the Great Depression, was in its last throes.

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Boom Times for Criminal Syndicates | TomDispatch.com

Last Wednesday, the front page of the Wall Street Journal pulled no punches. The lead headline was: "Global Slump Seen Deepening." ("The outlook for the global economy worsened on the eve of a summit of the world's 20 biggest economic powers…") A chart just beneath that headline, labeled "Gloomier Outlook" and showing World Bank economic projections, was nothing short of dramatic. The graph line for world trade simply plunged off a visual cliff and, like an arrow heading for a target, went straight down. The last paragraph of the piece quoted World Bank President Robert Zoellick this way: "In London, Washington, and Paris, people talk of bonuses or no bonuses. In parts of Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, the struggle is for food or no food."

CARACAS, Venezuela (CNN) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he would be willing to accept prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which U.S. President Barack Obama has said he will close, the Venezuelan government said Thursday.

Chavez also said he hopes the United States will give Cuba back the land on which the naval base is located, the government said in a news release.

"We would not have any problem receiving a human being," the government release quoted Chavez as saying in an interview Wednesday with Al Jazeera TV.

The United States obtained the Guantanamo base in 1903, after Spain's surrender in the Spanish-American War of 1898. In 2002, then-President George W. Bush opened the detention center to hold what the Bush administration categorized as enemy combatants captured in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Seymour Hersh: Secret U.S. Forces Carried Out Assassinations in 'a Lot of' Countries, Including in Latin America
The investigative journalist for The New Yorker explains his recent bombshell revelation about Dick Cheney's "executive assassination" squads.
By Amy Goodman | Democracy Now! | March 31, 2009

Amy Goodman: Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh created a stir last month when he said the Bush administration ran an executive assassination ring that reported directly to Vice President Dick Cheney. Hersh made the comment during a speech at the University of Minnesota on March 10th.

Seymour Hersh: Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination wing, essentially. And it's been going on and on and on. And just today in the Times there was a story saying that its leader, a three-star admiral named McRaven, ordered a stop to certain activities because there were so many collateral deaths. It's been going in -- under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or to the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving.

Hopeful Change In El Salvador?
By Stephen Lendman

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:

"Fifty years of lies, fifty years of injustice, fifty years of frustration. (El Salvador's) history (is pockmarked by) people starving to death, living in misery. For fifty years, the same people had all the power, all the money, all the jobs, all the education, all the opportunities." Finally they rebelled but failed.

Report: Russia may base bombers in Cuba | MSNBC
Venezuela also temporarily offers island site as Moscow eyes Caribbean

Russian strategic bombers may be based in Cuba in the future, a Russian Air Force chief told Interfax news agency on Saturday.

Maj. Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev, chief of staff of Russia's long-range aviation, said Cuba had air bases with four or five suitable runways.

Interfax reported that he said Cuba could be used to base Russian bombers if the two countries "display a political will", adding "we are ready to fly there."

Zhikharev also said that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has offered an island as a temporary base for Russian planes.

Zhikharev said Chavez had offered "a whole island with an airdrome, which we can use as a temporary base for strategic bombers," the agency reported. "If there is a corresponding political decision, then the use of the island ... by the Russian Air Force is possible."

Thank you, President Obama. At long last - better late than never - a high-level official of the Obama Administration has clearly affirmed U.S. neutrality ahead of Sunday's Presidential election in El Salvador.

Voice of America reports:

Friday in Washington, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Tom Shannon said the United States supports the democratic process in El Salvador and will work with whomever is elected.

Also on Friday, Rep. Howard Berman, (D-CA), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, affirmed that neither Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans in the U.S. nor remittance flows from the U.S. to El Salvador would be affected by the outcome of the election. From the Committee website:

Last week, more than 30 Members of Congress joined Rep. Raul Grijalva in asking President Obama to affirm U.S. neutrality in El Salvador's Presidential election on Sunday March 15, to stop the recycling in El Salvador of US threats when Salvadorans voted in 2004. But there has been no high-level response from the Obama Administration, Rep. Grijalva told Democracy Now! yesterday.

But right-wing Republicans in Congress have not been quiet. Upside Down News reports:

President Obama wants, quite reasonably, to "reset" relations with Russia. He also said, quite reasonably, he would "go through the federal budget line by line, programs that don't work, we cut."

Our relations with Colombia also need to be reset. "Plan Colombia," which was supposedly going to cut the flow of Colombian cocaine into the U.S., doesn't work, neither to reduce the flow of illegal drugs, nor to promote human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Colombia. Since Plan Colombia doesn't work, it should be cut.

An October report from the Government Accountability Office found that coca-leaf production in Colombia had increased by 15% and cocaine production had increased by 4% between 2000 and 2006, and recommended cutting funding. Plan Colombia has cost U.S. taxpayers over $6 billion.

We all know that President Obama has a lot on his plate. On the other hand, as candidate Obama reminded us, "words matter," especially the words spoken by the President of the United States, and with El Salvador facing a watershed Presidential election on March 15, President Obama could do a lot for the people of El Salvador and the future of U.S. relations with Latin America simply by saying something along the following lines between now and March 15:

"The United States government will remain neutral in El Salvador's March 15 presidential race, will respect the election results, and will work toward a positive relationship with whichever party is elected."

If you haven't been following the recent history of U.S. relations with Central America in general and El Salvador in particular, that might seem like a pretty banal statement. But in the context of the actual history of massive U.S. interference in the region's political processes, such a statement would be revolutionary.

Bolivarianism Triumphs in Referendum Vote
by Stephen Lendman

On February 15, Venezuelans voted on whether to let presidents, National Assembly representatives, governors, mayors, and state legislators run indefinitely for re-election after Chavez last December proposed a national referendum for constitutional change - so voters, not politicians could decide.

Sunday they spoke decisively in favor by a 54.4% to 45.6% margin with over 94% of votes counted. Chavez didn't win. Venezuelans did for Bolivarian continuity and against oligarch dominance, no democracy, and back to an impoverished state.

Since 1999, Chavez transformed Venezuela to what it is today:

• a Bolivarian republic based on "solidarity, fraternity, love, justice, liberty and equality" beyond the "free-market" model of worker exploitation for capital;
  

General Motors to Invest $1 Billion in Brazil Operations -- Money to Come from U.S. Rescue Program
By Russ Dallen | Latin American Herald Tribune

SAO PAULO -- General Motors plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind of problems the U.S. automaker is facing in its home market, said the beleaguered car maker.

According to the president of GM Brazil-Mercosur, Jaime Ardila, the funding will come from the package of financial aid that the manufacturer will receive from the U.S. government and will be used to "complete the renovation of the line of products up to 2012."

"It wouldn't be logical to withdraw the investment from where we're growing, and our goal is to protect investments in emerging markets," he said in a statement published by the business daily Gazeta Mercantil.

Bashing Venezuelan Democracy
by Stephen Lendman

In November/December 2006, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's (FAIR) Steve Rendall explained that "Hugo Chavez never had a chance with the US press." It's been a constant since his December 1998 election, and hasn't let up to this day, with language all too familiar:

Venezuela, CITGO Ensure Continuity of Heating Oil Program | Submitted by Michael Munk | www.MichaelMunk.com

Michael Munk reports: Media reports, which barely acknowledged this program when it began in 2004, seemed happy to claim that lower oil prices forced Venezuela to cancel it. For example, NYTimes' "Venezuela Suspends Heating Aid to the U.S" by the dedicated critic of Venezuela, Simon Romero, begins: "Venezuela’s national oil company is suspending a program that provides discounted heating oil to poor communities in the United States, as officials here struggle to find ways of preserving hard currency reserves amid a plunge in oil revenues."

The Media Response to Venezuelan Elections
by Stephen Lendman

On November 23, Venezuela held regional and local elections for governors, mayors and other municipal offices. Over 5000 candidates contested in 603 races for 22 state governors, 328 mayors, 233 state legislative council members, 13 Caracas Metropolitan area council members, and seven others for the Alto Apure District Council.

As mandated under Article 56 of the Bolivarian Constitution: "All persons have the right to be registered (to vote) free of charge with the Civil Registry Office after birth, and to obtain public documents constituting evidence of the biological identity, in accordance with the law."

It's a constitutional mandate to let all Venezuelans vote. Once registered, none are purged from the rolls, obstructed, or prevented from having their vote count like so often happens in America. In Venezuela, democracy works.

General Motors to Invest $1 Billion in Brazil Operations -- Money to Come from U.S. Rescue Program
By Russ Dallen | Latin American Herald

General Motors (GM) plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind of problems the U.S. automaker is facing in its home market, said the beleaguered car maker.

According to the president of GM Brazil-Mercosur, Jaime Ardila, the funding will come from the package of financial aid that the manufacturer will receive from the U.S. government and will be used to "complete the renovation of the line of products up to 2012."

"It wouldn't be logical to withdraw the investment from where we're growing, and our goal is to protect investments in emerging markets," he said in a statement published by the business daily Gazeta Mercantil.

Russia builds ties in United States' backyard
By Chris Kraul | LA Times

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev plans to travel this month to Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba to strengthen regional ties, a tour that underscores a foreign policy challenge close to home that awaits the Obama administration.

Medvedev's visit to Venezuela comes as Russia and the Latin American nation strengthen their economic and military relationship. In July, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a strident critic of President Bush, told reporters in Moscow that he might spend as much as $30 billion buying Russian arms through 2012.

Targeting Hugo Chavez
by Stephen Lendman

Since taking office in February 1999, America's dominant media have relentlessly attacked Chavez because of the good example he represents and threat it might spread in spite of scant chance it will in today's climate.

Yet some of his fiercest critics maintain pressure and show up often on the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page. Most recently on November 10 by its America's columnist, Mary O'Grady. Her style is agitprop. Her space a truth-free zone. Her latest in an article headlined "Hugo Chavez Spreads the Loot" referring to what The New York Times calls "Suitcasegate."

McCain linked to group in Iran-Contra affair
By Pete Yost | Miami Herald

Republican Sen. John McCain served on the advisory board to the U.S. chapter of an international group linked to ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America in the 1980s.

The U.S. Council for World Freedom also aided rebels trying to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua. That landed the group in the middle of the Iran-Contra affair and in legal trouble with the Internal Revenue Service, which revoked the charitable organization's tax exemption.