Posts that I especially recommend for Sunday, June 13, 2021

• The Difference Between Totalitarian Regimes And Free Democracies by Australian Caitlin Johnstone with her American husband reading the script, which is also provided in the article from her weblog. My reaction: The only criticism I have is that quotation marks should be around "free democracy". As it is (without quotation marks) there is a tendency to cynicism. "Free democracy" implies a propaganda construct, whereas a free democracy can be very real.

• A Few Thoughts on White Identity by Gary Engler from Dissident Voice. (Note: Engler reviews a book entitled White Fragility: Why White People Have Such a Hard Time Talking About Racism.)

In my opinion, this book starkly epitomizes the dangerous consequences when discussions of white identity are divorced from class analysis. 

• The 2021 Corporate Bamboozle On World Food Systems from GPEnewsdocs featuring a long interview and discussion between Lynn Fries, "producer of Global Political Economy or GPEnewsdocs, and Pat Mooney, who is "leading [the] IPES-Food’s ‘Long Food Movement’ project. My commentary follows: 

Fries and Mooney both represent small farmers in their quest to retain control over the world's food production in contrast to Big Ag's corporate dominance that is emerging under the propaganda construct of "multistakeholderism". The latter term is defined by the Transnational Institute as:

 

Multistakeholderism is a slippery term as most of the definitions are too vague and general and because it is applied to many different forms of governance. It is also an evolving form of governance. ....

 

In multistakeholderism, ‘stakeholders’ become the central actors without any clear procedure to designate ‘stakeholders’.

 

This is in contrast to the previous governing ideology of multilateralism based on interactions and agreements between nation-states. Big Ag is pushing the concept of multistakeholderism to give transnational corporations more relevance in global discussions and in legal bodies such as the UN. In my opinion, "multistakeholderism" is a sneaky construct to give global corporations (and their capitalist backers) as financial "stakeholders" more legitimacy in upcoming legal decisions by the UN. Financial stakeholders have always primarily meant those who have a financial or economic stake in outcomes.

 

Neoliberals (or transnationals) of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire have already proved their power in the recent pandemic by co-opting the World Health Organization (WHO) of the UN. Co-opting of the UN's agency was accomplished after Trump's decision to withdraw US support for the WHO and the billionaire Bill Gates and his foundation stepped in to provide the greatest single monetary support of WHO among nations. This new construct is used to effect a stealthy move around the poorer nations of the world and to enhance the power of the Empire's transnational agricultural corporations.

I think Pat Mooney is a rather naive "do-gooder" who will have little influence on international legal bodies.

• 💥Propaganda and the Media — Let’s Tell Some Lies — Part 5 by Larry Romanoff from "The Saker" weblog. This is a best post. My reaction: Romanoff illustrates how your views of events in the world are distorted by billionaire-owned media corporations to make you ignorant of the Empire's actual crimes.

I have nearly 1,000 such stories in my files, enough to fill a thick book, and all reprehensibly dishonest in their presentation. When Westerners have only a diet of daily articles like this presented to them by their most trusted media, how is it possible for anyone to accurately understand anything about China?

• How US govt-funded media fueled a violent coup in Nicaragua by Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton from The Grayzone. My reaction: This is an important report because it illustrates how the directors of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire are going about subverting entire nations (think Ukraine as another example) to the dominance of the Empire. In Nicaragua they were not successful because the people under successive Sandinista governments had encouraged the people to become politically aware.

• Toxic Chemicals Engulf the Planet by Robert Hunziker from Dissident Voice.
  

• Could temperatures keep rising? from Arctic News. 

A recent post suggests that the 1.5°C threshold was already crossed in 2012, i.e. well before the Paris Agreement was adopted by the U.N. (in 2015), while there could be a temperature rise of more than 3°C [ by 2026.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2020

• The Dollar Standard Slipping Out of Control? by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation. My commentary follows:
  

Crooke has an interesting background in British diplomacy, MI-6 spy analyst, and now geopolitical analyst. In this article he attempts to unravel the mysteries of global currencies, and in particular, the Federal Reserve's printing money and giving it mostly to US banks and corporations. His analysis explains this as an attempt to make US dollars cheaper and easier for the US government to pay off its soaring debts.

It is about U.S. explosive debt accumulation, on account of the Coronavirus lockdown. In a world where there is already over $100 trillion in dollar-denominated debt, on which the U.S. cannot default; nor will it ever be repaid. It can therefore only be inflated away. That is to say the debt can only be managed through debasing the currency. (Debt jubilees are viewed as beyond the pale.)

One thing to keep in mind: Control of the Federal Reserve lies mostly in the real ruling class that owns most of the USA--the financial and dominant part of the ruling capitalist class. However, these fabulously rich and powerful people are split between domestic financiers but are increasingly being challenged by transnational capitalists or "globalists". The latter see the cheapening of dollar as a hindrance to their transnational capitalist profits and are becoming worried about the US dollar as a prime global currency.

But keep in mind, these problems exist regardless of which capitalist party wins the elections. Elections are mostly irrelevant in this fake democracy in order to distract workers from the real issues. International workers, particularly highly skilled and trained workers who are essential to make economies run, have been largely co-opted with lucrative careers into serving capitalists. Capitalists have nothing much to do but to bet on stocks, bonds, and currencies in their Wall Street casinos. Meanwhile, ordinary workers are left to struggle to feed, clothe, and house their families on a planet that is increasingly threatened by global warming.

• Stories Of Economic Despair From America’s Worst Economic Downturn Since The Great Depression Of The 1930s by Michael Snyder from End Of The American Dream.

• US GDP Collapses & Economic Rebound Fades by Jack Rasmus from his weblog.
  

• A Crisis of Capitalist "Civilisation" from The Internationalists.

• CDC Director Admits Hospitals Have Monetary ‘Incentive’ to Inflate Coronavirus Death Count by Chris Enloe from Anti-Empire.

•  Are Face Masks Effective? The Evidence. From Swiss Policy Research.

• What They are Not Telling You! The Mask’s Impact on Your Health by Laura Ingraham, Dr. Pascal Sacré, and Dr. Russell Blaylock from Global Research.
  

• Masks are a Psychological Preparation for Mandatory Vaccinations by Bill Willers from Dissident Voice.

• New Book Due Out September 1 posted by Edward Curtin from his weblog Behind the Curtain. (Note: I am promoting this book, SEEKING TRUTH IN A COUNTRY OF LIES, on the basis of Curtin's past record of excellent posts on his weblog.)

• Shape Yourself Into The Perfect Weapon Against The Empire by Australian Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. (Note: Very inspiring in a time filled with despair!)

• Document exposes new US plot to overthrow Nicaragua’s elected socialist gov’t by Ben Norton from The Grayzone.
  

Posts that I especially recommend today: Tuesday, December 31, 2019

• What we're told about ISIS is a lie (full show) reported by Michele Greenstein on the Rick Sanchez program from RT. Although guest-speakers on this program engage in rapid-fire delivery of their comments, Greenstein focuses on the Deep State and its propaganda organs, and as such I view the first 20:10 minutes as essential viewing.

• US Embassy in Iraq evacuated amid angry protests over airstrike on PMU from PressTV (Iran).

• As Honduras Collapses, Its People are Forced to Flee by Laura Carlsen from CounterPunch.

• Congress Just Passed Nightmare Legislation that Strips Trillions in Wealth from the Middle Class by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from their weblog Wall Street on Parade. 

• Bolivian Vassals Are Merely Aping Their Imperial Masters by Stephen Karganovic from Strategic Culture Foundation.

• Police in Hong Kong Brutalized by Rioters While Attacked by the Western Press by Andre Vltchek from Dissident Voice. 

• ‘I’m slowly dying here’: ‘Sedated’ Assange tells friend during Christmas Eve call from UK prison as health concerns mount from RT.

• Fires create hellish conditions across Australia by Mike Head from World Socialist Web Site.

Articles I recommend for Monday, September 2, 2019

• West’s “Humanitarian” Claims Struggle as Syrian War Nears Endgame by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook.

• Take forward the fight to free Julian Assange! by Joseph Kishore from World Socialist Web Site.

•  The Queen’s Active Role in the Right Wing Coup by Craig Murray from his weblog.

• Max Blumenthal on the US legacy in Honduras: migrant crisis, political murders, narco-President from The Grayzone.
  

‘The coup turned Honduras into hell’: Interview with President Manuel Zelaya on 10th anniversary of overthrow by US

Click here to listen to or read a transcript of an interview with the former President of Honduras conducted by Anya Parampil from The Grayzone.

Learn from a leader of Honduras who refused to be a puppet of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire as he reports on what he learned about the Empire and capitalism:

MANUEL ZELAYA: That is how capitalism works. In the US, France, anywhere. Capitalism is based on just one principle: accumulation of wealth. That is how it functions here and in the rest of the world.

A small elite of transnational [corporations] associated with people in countries who clean up for them. They do business, and that business creates the need to set up security [power] for themselves.

Recommended articles for Wednesday, January 23, 2019

• Putin-Erdogan Summit: Idlib and al-Hasaka strongly present and the Kurds are the biggest losers by Elijah J Magnier from his blog.

• US Military Apologizes For Posting Uncomfortably Honest Tweet by Caitlin Johnstone from her blog.

• Another Defeat for Imperialist Feminism in Nicaragua by Nora McCurdy and Stephen Sefton from Tortilla con Sal.

• The Smile of Class Privilege by Kenn Orphan from CounterPunch. 

Yes, I recognize the smile in the picture. I've seen it occasionally over my long adult life, but never in a grossly intimidating situation as in the picture largely because I'm white.

• How Liberal Media 'Operates as Propaganda System for State Power' by Kit Klarenberg from Sputnik.

The founders of Media Lens (a British alternative website) David Cromwell and David Edwards, are interviewed by Klarenberg. Much of the discussion centers on "liberal media" which I admit I no longer understand. The political spectrum of what some people call the Anglo-American Empire has so shifted to the right that I am quite confused about the distinctions. Because liberals and conservatives served the same capitalist ruling class, such distinctions logically moved to the right following the events of the last 40 years. I am referring to the stark contradiction of the system of capitalism and a habitat that could be sustainable for human beings to live in. I am also referring to the dramatic challenges to the capitalist Empire (4th Reich?) that emerging nations such as Russia and China have posed for the directors of the dominant capitalist Empire. Therefore, separating liberal from conservative is no longer valid. It is now corporate media, under the control of the capitalist ruling class, versus alternative media which are increasingly questioning the narratives of corporate media.

Anyway, the questions pose to the founders of Media Lens draws out much very interesting material about how our masters of the Empire are flooding the media with self-serving propaganda in an attempt to shape our views and values and see the world through their lens, which is that of power and profits.

Articles recommended for Tuesday, January 22, 2019

• Talk Nation Radio: Dana Frank on What the U.S. Is Doing to Honduras. Dave Swanson interviews author Dana Frank of The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup.

And you wonder why so many Hondurans and their neighbors are fleeing north to survive.

• The Russian Pension Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost... by "The Saker" (Andrei Raevsky) from his blog.

The author provides us with many very interesting details of the current political scene in Russia as he tries to figure out the growing split in popularity between Putin's followers and those of Medvedev that he describes as a "fifth column" supported by Western capitalists. 

This descendant of White Russians (those who fought against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution) sets us straight about frequent US propaganda that testifies to the unpopularity of Pres. Vladimir Putin. He explains the current Russian political scene as one where the former members of the nomenklatura (Soviet bureaucracy) rose to form a political class after the dissolution of the Soviet government in the years around 1990. These former members connived to buy up shares of the former Soviet companies "for pennies on the dollar" to become rich, and they were aided by Western capitalists. They are still around today, and their leader is Dmitry Medvedev who has alternated with Putin in running the Russian government. 

The author concludes:

The political landscape in Russia is becoming more complicated, which is both good and bad. It is bad because Putin’s personal political credit suffers, however modestly for now, from his continuous inability to purge the Kremlin from the 5th columnists, but it is also good because if things get bad enough Putin will have no choice but to (finally!) get rid of at least the most notorious 5th columnists. But fundamentally the Russian people need to decide. Do they really want to live in a western-style capitalist society (with all the russophobic politics and the adoption of the terminally degenerate “culture” such a choice implies), or do they want a “social society” (to use Putin’s own words) – meaning a society in which social and economic justice and the good of the country are placed above corporate and personal profits.

You could say that this is a battle of greed vs ethics.

The future of Russia, and much of the world, will depend on the outcome of this battle.

• Report: U.S. Oil and Gas Expansion Threatens to Unleash Climate Pollution Equivalent to nearly 1,000 Coal Plants by David Turnbull from Oil Change International.

Recommended articles for Tuesday, January 8, 2019

• Turkey Rejects New U.S. Syria Plan - Humiliates John Bolton by Bernhard from his blog Moon of Alabama.

• The terrible forthcoming destruction of the "Caribbean Basin" by French geopolitical analyst Thierry Meyssan from Voltaire Network.

• First Bill Introduced in U.S. Senate Makes Boycotting Israel ‘Illegal’ from 21st Century Wire.

Nations as Foreign Capital Corporations

Click here to access article by Francisco Fernández-Bullón from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard. 

The article is not well written (or translated), but one still gets a realist impression that many of the Latin American countries (the US's "backyard") are ruled by mafia-like corporate gangs who have plundered such countries for many decades. Such insights are helpful in understanding why so many Central Americans are marching to the US border. 

The foreign capital company strips all of the homelands of its excess inhabitants, who then have to migrate on foot looking for other lands. The only nationals that Honduras has at the moment are Orlando Hernandez and his cadre of cocaine traffickers who are the only ones who feel at home in the country (although they would probably prefer to live in Miami and be North Americans) and perhaps the high-ranking US military stationed at the base of Palmerola. .... However scarce the rights enjoyed by the Hondurans that manage to enter the stepmother country of adoption that could be the USA, they’ll always have more than in their own country, where they have none and where their death isn’t news. Now finally they have become “news” after many decades of being anonymous victims, thanks to an epic journey on foot, crossing the hostile lands of Central America and North America: lands hostile to those who don’t have more capital than only their hands or their wit, as long as they do not use it to foment crime and robbery.

Why are thousands of Hondurans walking towards the US border?

Click here to access article by Zoe PC from Peoples Dispatch. 

The author provides some reasons why. If you are not aware of the many ways that the USA uses Central America as playgrounds for corporations to plunder, you are not at fault. Corporate media rarely gives you accurate news about the world we live in, and especially about foreign countries. 

Nearly 7,000 people are part of the caravan that began early last week. The reasons for their flight are diverse but most of them have to do with the absence of dignified living conditions in Honduras. People are unable to access education, health care and employment, and violence is ubiquitous. The situation has drastically worsened in the last decade with the coup d’etat, imposition of the dictatorship and the illegal reelection of Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH). Many have said that the thousands of Hondurans headed towards the United States border are not in search of the ‘American dream’ but are rather fleeing the Honduran nightmare.

The only criticism I have is that the article over emphasizes the policies of Donald Trump. He is only the latest incarnation of an Empire official leader whose assignment by the US ruling capitalist class is to lie about US imperial activities in Central America. However, with Trump it is hard to tell whether his statements and policies are based on ignorance or knowing lies.

The US Ruined Their Countries, Now Trump Calls Them “Animals” and Sends Them Back

Click here to access article by Jon Jeter from Mint Press News. (Added sentence for clarity of views at 7 PM CT.)

Jeter concentrates mostly on the relatively recent history of US interference in Honduras to illustrate how the US ruling class promotes and secures their investments throughout Central America, but at the same time such interference also brings misery and death for ordinary people. Hence, many of them flee north. 

It’s important to contextualize the Americas historically as a battle between the mostly European settlers who own the New World and the mostly indigenous and black workers who built it. Destabilizing Central America allows multinationals to continue to exploit labor and resources, and dates back to the CIA’s 1954 plot to overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatemala’s Socialist President Jacobo Arbenz, whose plan to redistribute land to the country’s landless peasant farmers threatened the massive holdings of the United Fruit Company, the predecessor of Chiquita Brands. The coup eventually triggered a civil war between leftist rebels and the U.S.-backed military, led by avid anti-Communist generals.

But, to blame Trump for this, as implied by the title, is ridiculous.

Neocons Have Been Destroying Sovereign Nations for 20 Years

Click here to access article by Neil Clark from Defend Democracy Press. 

Clark notices a pattern to all the regime change projects that have been spearheaded by the US ruling class in Yugoslavia, Libya and the Syrian Arab Republic. But the model began with Nicaragua which I witnessed first hand. They used the proxy army called Contras who were based in neighboring Honduras to attack and destroy the clinics and schools set up by the Sandinista government in Nicaragua after they overthrew the Somoza dictatorship and favorite puppet of the US ruling class. 

When activists managed to get Congress to pass a law, called the Boland Amendment, forbidding the government from funding such activities, our imperialist ruling class went around the legislation to finance this project by selling arms to Iran and CIA assisted drug running. The drugs ended up in the African-American ghettos of the US. In the case of Nicaragua our masters were more worried about a good example of the Sandinista government that might inspire other Latin American countries to do likewise. Since then they have perfected this model in the countries that Clark identified.

 How the 1989 War on Manuel Noriega’s Panama Super-Charged US Militarism

Click here to access article by Greg Grandin from The Nation. (updated on June 1st, 10:45 AM Seattle time)

The news of Manuel Noriega's recent death stirred up a lot of bad memories about the sordid actions of ex-CIA chief and then President H. W. Bush and the complicity of America's media corporations. In the 1980s I was very politically aware of, and active to oppose, all the secret wars the US was involved in trying to control governments in Central America. I am referring to El Salvador where the US supported a government and paramilitary that was engaged in terrorizing dissidents, murdered nuns and Archbishop Romero. 

I am also referring to the ongoing attempt to overthrow the very popular Sandinista government in Nicaragua. I remember working hard in organizations that led to the 1984 Boland Amendment that prohibited the government from giving any kind of military aid to US's terrorist army known as the Contras that were based in nearby Honduras. Up until then they had been funded and organized by the CIA to terrorize civilians and the staff working at the popular health clinics and schools in Nicaragua in an effort to overturn the government. (Does this sound familiar?) I personally saw some of the destroyed clinics and talked with several American lay Catholic workers who confirmed the reports of these actions.

Noriega's death brought back so many other memories like the Iran-Contra hearings which revealed a lot, but suppressed a lot more of the CIA's dirty deeds. The CIA carried on its dirty deeds in El Salvadore and Nicaragua with funding from mainly three sources: selling arms to Iran, diverting foreign aid destined to Israel and other countries, and the lucrative drug trade which were imported into the ghettos of the US. This is where Noriega was useful. While on the CIA payroll, he played an important role in support of the US by actions by facilitating drug trafficking. He had close relations with drug czar Pablo Escobar of Columbia. But at a certain point he apparently balked at providing more of such services, and H. W. Bush angered by this insubordination, decided to take him out by invading Panama.

But I won't burden you with the whole story. Grandin does a good job summarizing these events. If you really want to learn more about not only the realities but what corporate media provided as fake news to US readers, I've listed the following links (in chronological order):

• http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-u-s-invades-panama
• http://fair.org/extra/how-television-sold-the-panama-invasion/
• http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/04/world/noriega-s-surrender-overview-noriega-gives-himself-up-us-military-flown-florida.html
• http://articles.latimes.com/1991-10-04/news/mn-3423_1_medellin-cartel
• https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal85-1147212#H2_9
• http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/11/us/noriega-sentenced-to-40-years-in-jail-on-drug-charges.html
• http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/11/us/noriega-sentenced-to-40-years-in-jail-on-drug-charges.html
• http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/12/opinion/manuel-noriega-prisoner-of-war.html
• https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/30/general-manuel-noriega-feared-panamanian-dictator-cia-asset
• https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/30/world/americas/manuel-antonio-noriega-dead-panama.html
• http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/01/truth-operation-panama-160131085323562.html 

Also on June 1st I added the following article entitled "The Panama Deception" which includes a very interesting 1:31:09 video by the same name.  

Five Ways Cybersecurity Will Suffer If Congress Repeals the FCC Privacy Rules

Click here to access article by Peter Eckersley and Jeremy Gillula from Electronic Frontier Foundation.

...last Thursday, Republicans in the Senate voted to repeal those rules. If the House of Representatives votes the same way and the rules are repealed, it’s pretty obvious that the results for American’s privacy will be disastrous.

But what many people don’t realize is that Americans’ cybersecurity is also at risk. That’s because privacy and security are two sides of the same coin: privacy is about controlling who has access to information about you, and security is how you maintain that control. You usually can’t break one without breaking the other, and that’s especially true in this context. To show how, here are five ways repealing the FCC’s privacy rules will weaken Americans’ cybersecurity.

The authors writing for this foundation are likely internet geeks who are bit challenged in their understanding of political reality. The last time I tried appealing to Congress to urge any action was when the Boland Amendment was being considered for passage in 1982. Our government during the Reagan administration was actively organizing and supporting a terrorist army known as the Contras that were based in nearby Honduras to sow chaos in Nicaragua (does this sound familiar?). About this time I had returned from a trip to Nicaragua where I saw schools and clinics funded by the Sandinista government that were attacked and destroyed by the Contras. I and many activists engaged in a massive campaign to inform Americans of this and succeeded in gaining overwhelming public opposition to our government's support of the Contras, and support for the Boland Amendment which prohibited such support.

Yes, this resolution passed, but ruling class operatives (mostly in the CIA) soon engineered other ways around Congressional authority to fund their terrorist army. They used the Contras to supply a burgeoning drug operation that saw massive amounts of cocaine imported into the US, primarily into the African-American ghettos of the large cities in the US. And they sold weapons to Iran.

This experience proved to be the last straw in my hope that working through the official, supposedly democratic, institutions could change anything. I had already lived through the Vietnam War and saw corporate media engage in massive disinformation campaign to hide the realities of that war. I had already lived through the assassinations of any public figure who tried to argue against our official policies. I became convinced that the only way to bring about significant change was through revolution and the overthrow of the real controllers of our society--the capitalist class. 

The Impact of CAFTA: Drugs, Gangs, and Immigration

Click here to access article by Héctor Perla Jr. from TeleSur. 

On March 1, 2006 the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) went into effect between the United States and El Salvador, the first of six Central American nations and the Dominican Republic that would eventually become part of the deal. The agreement, modeled on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, was seen by the Bush Administration as the first step in a new way toward creating a hemispheric free trade zone after the defeat of the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Perla reviews the impacts that another neoliberal trade pact, CAFTA, has had on the Central American countries. It appears that this treaty has had largely the same effects on these countries as NAFTA did on Mexico: the wiping out of small farmers, increased imports of US subsidized bio-engineered grains and foodstuffs produced by large corporations from the US and a corresponding decrease in exports of like items to the US. This dramatic change has cause numerous secondary social effects like drug trafficking, gang violence, migration north to the US (see this), and US government political interference of behalf of corporations in the governance of Central American countries.

The trade agreement has given the U.S. government's opportunity to leverage development aid into political influence, and corporations the legal mechanisms to challenge environmental regulations. Recent examples of U.S. intervention in Salvadoran domestic affairs, like pushing for a Public Private Partnership Law, and the U.S. protest over the Salvadoran government’s awarding an important seed purchase program to local cooperatives instead of a Monsanto subsidiary, occurred within the framework laid out in CAFTA.

The US School That Trains Dictators & Death Squads

Click here to access introduction by "Don Quijones" to the following 28:18 video from his website Raging Bull-Shit.

I am on an email list from a human rights watch-dog group--for example, see this--that currently reports on human rights violations in Honduras and Guatemala. I receive almost weekly reports of horrendous violations committed by the militaries and paramilitaries (essentially private terrorist armies) of these countries. It is likely that graduates of this school are involved in these crimes. 

Although the following video report mostly focuses on the activities of this school in the 1980s and 90s in Central America to promote the interests of US and Canadian mining corporations, this report is not merely an historical account because the school is still very active today.

El Salvador vs Pacific Rim: The Price of Saying ‘No’ to a Gold Mine

Click here to access article by Ciara Nugent from The Argentina Independent. 

Gold mining is one of the most polluting mining industries there are, and El Salvadorians through their government refused to allow a mining company to continue to pollute their water supplies and are now facing a $301 million lawsuit.

North American mining corporations have been most notorious for using violent tactics to gain access to various metals throughout Latin America. Pacific Rim, a Canadian gold mining company, is one such corporation. The details are a bit complicated, but what is clear is that they first used terrorist tactics to mine gold in El Salvador, then they gained access to a legal weapon through the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism that has become a part of all "free trade" agreements. Read the article to find out what El Salvadorians, and all smaller countries, are up against with this weapon while fighting for clean water and healthy environments in their respective countries. Once again, it's the people versus powerful international capitalists whose corporations have the sole legally defined purpose as profits.

To challenge El Salvador’s rejection of their project, Pacific Rim activated the ISDS – investor-state dispute settlement provisions. Written into most trade agreements these days, and due to be expanded under the massive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the ISDS allows companies to challenge the decisions of governments that might be said to affect their investments in the country. The main forum for these cases, including El Salvador’s, is the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). It was established by the World Bank in 1966, and currently has more than 200 ISDS cases pending.

The ISDS is built into a free-trade agreement between the US and the countries of Central America. Pacific Rim initially gained access to this clause by transferring part of its business to the US, via a subsidiary. 

How Extreme Energy Leads to Extreme Politics

Click here to access article by Aldo Orellana López and Sian Cowman from Foreign Policy in Focus via Uncommon Thought Journal. (I am posting the article this way because I encountered problems with FPIF's website.)

As corporations and governments around the world scramble to access harder-to-reach fossil fuels in fracking wells and tar sands, the struggles of communities on the front lines of this expansion of extractivism are becoming more extreme — and more visible.

And so is the backlash against any who resist.

Indigenous peoples who find themselves “in the way” of extractivist projects are increasingly finding their territorial rights, among others, violated.

A particularly salient example is playing out in Argentina.

This is also happening in Bolivia and Ecuador regarding fossil fuels, and in Honduras and Guatemala (see the latest example here) with metal mining.

The Coup and Its Aftermath: Honduras Bleeding

Click here to access article by Eric Draitser and Ramiro S. Funez from CounterPunch. 

June 28 marked the six year anniversary of the military coup in Honduras – the day that a democratically elected left wing government was ousted by a US-backed, US-trained cabal of generals and right wing politicians and landowners. It could correctly be called a “Quiet Coup” primarily because it took place with very little fanfare from the corporate media which, to the extent that it covered it at all, did so mostly from a distorted perspective which spread more misinformation than truth. Today, six years (and many innocent lives, and billions of dollars) later, this shameful moment in recent history still remains largely forgotten.

Also, I recommend this piece from Al Jazeera entitled "The Honduran meltdown: Made in USA" which reports that Honduras is another disintegrating society and failed state "made in the USA" and created to serve US corporations.

US underwrites corruption and violence in Honduras

Click here to access article by Dana Frank from Al Jazeera. 

Since 2009, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández has helped depose a democratically elected president in a military coup, ousted part of the country’s Supreme Court and facilitated the illegal appointment of Honduras’ sitting attorney general. He's jettisoned the Honduran constitution through militarized policing, helped abolish presidential term limits and he even pushed through Congress a law that says that the Honduran constitution doesn't apply in new, privately-run “model cities.”

The US thoroughly dominates the governments of Guatemala and Honduras, and through intimidation and bribes heavily influences events in the rest of Central America largely on behalf of resource extracting corporations. In the 1980s Honduras in particular has served the US as a successful application of a terrorist army (the Contras) used to destabilize a nearby government (Nicaragua). Probably inspired by this success, US Empire directors have applied this method elsewhere in places like Libya and now in collaboration with Middle Easter cronies in the form of ISIS in the Middle East.

(Note: If you wish to know more about US related events in Honduras, I suggest simply entering "Honduras" in one of my search engines.)