Honduras Porfirio Pepe Lobo: Another Disaster for Central American Democracy Waiting in the Wing http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/2337--honduras-porfirio-pepe-lobo-another-disaster-for-central-american-democracy-waiting-in-the-wing-

Though State Department officials insist that the Honduras election process was transparent, in fact, no international observers were present to confirm the tally because—as announced by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon on September 23rd—the conditions for a free and fair election were not present. A scathing 147-page report released Wednesday, January 20th, by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission corroborates this, citing a litany of well-documented human rights abuses, including numerous political assassinations committed prior to, and following the election.

The report describes a militarized environment in which dissonant or critical opinions have been officially prohibited in “an egregious, arbitrary, unnecessary and disproportionate restriction, in violation of international law, of the right of every Honduran to express himself or herself freely, and to receive information from a plurality and diversity of sources.”

BY COHA Senior Research Fellow Adrienne Pine, Ph.D, also serves an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at American University. Dr. Pine recently authored the book Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras (University of California Press).

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AVATAR - FROM THREE PERSPECTIVES http://fromthewilderness.ning.com/profiles/blogs/avatar-from-three artcle below videos 

In order to do displace Indigenous peoples, governments in Latin America are forced by powerful interest groups to pass special legislation based on “free-trade” policies model, which were designed by Wall Street. This economic trend known as "neoliberalism" has opened the doors of protected areas to private corporations with enough money and influences to do what they please, without considering the rights of the Indigenous peoples living there, much less the environment.

Last June 2009 in Peru, hundreds of Awajun and Wampis Indigenous farmers were massacred by US-trained militarized police forces of Peru, in the Amazonian region of Bagua. The Natives were protesting peacefully against government legislation that allowed corporations to take over their lands resources, without previous consultation. Also as a result, many policemen of Indigenous heritage were killed by a riot of Natives in an oil station, after they heard of the Bagua massacre. Months later, the Awajun and Wampis peoples detained five employees of the Canadian mining company IAMGOLD, who didn't have authorization to enter their territory.

Sadly, in most cases the U.S. military is involved one way or another.We need to stand against rich countries oppressing poorer nations with direct military invasions or with provoked internal conflicts. It's happening today in Congo, Uganda, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Mexico, Colombia, Yemen, Burma, Pakistan, Nigeria, Peru, Canada, the poorest cities in the U.S., etc.

comment-the author of article,mentioned a certain massacre of the awa indigenous indians wich was initially attributed to farc(was later revealed to have been another case of uribes false positive)(Officer arrested over alleged killing of Awa Indians http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/6385-officer-arrested-over-alleged-killing-of-awa-indians.html)

RECONSTRUCTING HAITI ON STARVATION WAGES http://fromthewilderness.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/reconstructing-haiti-on-starvation-wages/

Some leading officials, including International Monetary Fund Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, have gone so far as to speak in terms of a “Marshall Plan” for Haiti. In reality, Haiti is now being run by the US military, which has deployed over 13,000 troops and unilaterally taken control of the country’s airport and port facilities.

The Pentagon has dominated the provision of relief, which it has subordinated to the number one priority of deploying combat-equipped US soldiers and Marines, much to the detriment of injured and hungry Haitians waiting for life-saving medical supplies and food. The plan, worked up at the behest of the UN last year, is aimed at expanding the Haitian economy through the development of free trade zones based on garment sweatshops in which Haitian workers would be paid near-starvation wages.

For corporate media, all advocacy isn't created equal http://mediamatters.org/columns/201001260021

The media love to talk about transparency and accountability when it comes to politicians and the government -- they should, it's an important subject. They, too, have such an obligation of transparency to the American people, particularly when it comes to who can and cannot advertise on their coveted airwaves. On that account, they continue to fail miserably.

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Censorship of Arab News Media(By US gov) http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_58288.shtml

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill to censor some of the Arab news media, particularly satellite channels if Washington deemed, with Israeli backing, that these satellite channels are broadcasting content that is in conflict with American and Israeli interests in the region.

Note that the United States claims to defend human rights and freedom of the press but accuses the “terrorists,” wherever they are, of lacking respect for democracy and human rights. At the same time, the U.S. is behaving contrary to what it preaches because it considers the basic measure for freedom of the press to be something that does not harm American or Israeli interests.

This is a new definition of media freedom that even the most powerful of dictatorships have failed to achieve. The United States and its high ranking planners have forgotten that they have U.S. government news media funded by American taxpayers that can only be broadcast outside the United States. U.S. law prohibits such broadcasts inside the country under legislative codes that do not allow the Treasury to finance media that is privately-owned rather than government-owned.

America Increasingly Looks Like A Developing Nation As 30% Of Americans Rapidly Approach Poverty, Or Are Already There http://www.businessinsider.com/30-of-america-approaching-poverty-2010-1

While substantial reductions in poverty were made during the 1990's, America's poor have been rocked by the dual economic downturns since 2000. The result is that poverty grew at twice the rate of U.S. population growth from 2000 - 2008, and now encompasses 39.1 million Americans.If one were to expand the definition of poverty to merely 'poor' (yet still very poor), then a eye-popping 30% of the nation lives no higher than twice the poverty base line.

Brookings: In 2008, 91.6 million people—more than 30 percent of the nation’s population—fell below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. More individuals lived in families with incomes between 100 and 200 percent of poverty line (52.5 million) than below the poverty line (39.1 million) in 2008. Between 2000 and 2008, large suburbs saw the fastest growing low-income populations across community types and the greatest uptick in the share of the population living under 200 percent of poverty.

gaia_mia:  2010 olympics & the canadian police state ,,,,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK6tWZhW7Y0

fascism seems to the new face of the bc government.

AH1N1 Vaccination Is Mandatory, Salud Will Use Force If Necessary http://www.insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2010/january/26/costarica-10012601.htm

Ministra Ávila said that the vaccine is mandatory.  Those identified in the high risk group - pregnant women, diabetics, patients with asthma, hyper tension, the obese and those working in the health care field - will be the first to be vaccinated.

The vice-ministra de Salud, Ana Morice, explained that the CCSS will be compiling a list from medical records of persons that are required to be vaccinated, especially in the Metropolitan (San José) area.Morice said those people will be notified by telephone, by the news media and by door-to-door visits by Salud officials where there is an address on file. 

"The vaccination is mandatory. It is important that the population go to the clinics. We will first make call to those who are to be vaccinated, then we will go looking for them if they do not come in", said Morice.The vice-ministra said that those people on the list who do not want to receive the vaccine, will be obligated to do so. "The idea is not use force, even though we have the right to go with the police to pull people from their homes and take them to a medical centre to be vaccinated", explained Morice.

comment-see..800000 doses of kids' H1N1 vaccine recalled http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34432437Do Not Take The H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine http://thebirdflupandemic.com/archives/do-not-take-the-h1n1-swine-flu-vaccine-until-you-read-these-tragic-real-life-vaccine-horror-stories

Roy Chaderton: The IACHR is slandering the Venezuelan government http://english.eluniversal.com/2010/01/25/en_pol_esp_diplomat:-the-iachr_25A3337211.shtml

Venezuela's ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Roy Chaderton, said that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has slandered the government of President Hugo Chavez in order to please the "far-right sectors of the hemisphere" by criticizing the shutdown of a cable TV station in Venezuela.

Chaderton criticized the fact that the IACHR rushes to act "when it comes to slandering" the Venezuelan government. Reference was made to the statement the autonomous body of the OAS issued a day after the suspension of several cable TV stations in Venezuela, among them RCTV Internacional, whose open-to-air broadcast license was terminated in 2007, AFP reported.

The IACHR rejected the "sudden" measure against several TV stations, which in its view "worsens the deterioration of the right to freedom of expression" in Venezuela.The statement issued by the IACHR is intended "to please once again the hopeless coup plotters, the representatives of the Venezuelan media dictatorship and members of the far right of the hemisphere," Chaderton said.

President Hugo Chavez writes off Haiti's oil debt to Venezuela http://www.haitinews.net/story/593414

IANS/EFE: President Hugo Chavez has announced that he will write off the undisclosed sum Haiti owes Venezuela for oil as part of a regional bloc's plans to help the impoverished Caribbean nation after the devastating Jan 12 earthquake. 'Haiti has no debt with Venezuela, just the opposite: Venezuela has a historical debt with that nation, with that people for whom we feel not pity but rather admiration, and we share their faith, their hope,' Chavez said after the extraordinary meeting of foreign ministers of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, or ALBA.

He also announced that ALBA has decided on a comprehensive plan that includes an immediate donation of $20 million to Haiti's health sector, and a fund that, Chavez said, will be at least $100 million 'for starters'.Oil-rich Venezuela is the economic heart of ALBA, which also includes Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Haiti is among several countries that send observers to ALBA meetings.

Chavez said one part of ALBA assistance to Haiti would consist of fuel distribution via 'mobile service stations' set to be up and running within a few weeks.The ALBA plan of aid for Haiti includes support for such sectors as agriculture, production, food imports and distribution, and immigration amnesty for Haitians living illegally in the bloc's member-states.Cuba and Venezuela sent assistance and aid workers to Haiti within days of the magnitude-7.0 temblor that left over 100,000 dead and 1.5 million people homeless.

Chavez delivers 200 more housing solutions and micro-enterprise park to Caracas http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=87841

President Chavez handed over 200 hundred new housing solutions in the second phase of the Cacique Tiuna urban development situated in the Altos de la Rinconada sector of Caracas. The houses are part of the government's refurbishment of barrio shacks.The first stage consisting of 440 apartments was completed and handed over in 2009 and according to Public Works & Housing Minister for social articulation, Aura Rosa Hernandez, 200 more solutions are being built to complete the second stage. Each dwelling has 71 m² with three (3) bedrooms, two bathrooms, living room, kitchen and area for a washing machine. The houses come complete with cooker, washing machine, freezer, water heater, and furniture.

As in the case of other new housing ventures, the government has opened a socio-productive programme to boost the setting up of micro-enterprises that will allow people job opportunities. The complex boasts of a nursery that can hold 250 children from the ages of 0 to 6.

The communal councils are an instrumental part of local organization in the new development, which the minister claimed would shortly become a Commune.The President insisted on speeding up delivery of housing solutions, adding that every 2.5 years Venezuela's population increases by 1 million inhabitants.During the handover, which was broadcast on the President's Sunday radio address, Chavez recommended Karl Deutsch's book, "Politics and Government," in which the author states that politics is concerned principally with government.

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Colombia finds a mass grave containing 2,000 bodies http://prensarural.org/spip/spip.php?article3527

In the small town of La Macarena, Meta region, 200 kilometers south of Bogota, one of the hottest areas of the Colombian conflict is the largest mass grave discovered in the recent history of Latin America, with a number of bodies "NN "buried without identification, which could reach 2,000, according to various sources and the residents themselves. Since 2005 the Army whose elite forces are deployed in the vicinity, has been deposited behind the local cemetery with hundreds of bodies that were buried command without a name.

The lawyer Jairo Ramirez is the secretary of the Standing Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Colombia and accompanied a delegation of British parliamentarians to place a few weeks ago when he began to discover the magnitude of the grave of La Macarena."What we saw was terrifying," he told public. "Countless bodies, and surface plates hundreds of white wood with NN and registration dates from 2005 until today." Ramirez adds, "Army Commander told us they were guerrillas killed in combat, but the people of the region tells of many community leaders, farmers and community advocates who disappeared without a trace.""The government does not want to investigate" 

Alfredo Molano. Sociologist and writer  Alfredo Molano, one of Colombia's most influential columnists, has toured the country as a chronicler of violence, which earned him exile to escape threats of military and paramilitary. 

What is the situation of the graves in Colombia?  The Attorney-General's own nation speaks of 25,000 "disappeared", that  must be somewhere. There are huge mass graves in Colombia. most people deleted. They may also have done away with them as did the nazis against their victims.

Do these graves have to do with the so called 'false positives?  Yes, this may be related to false positives [Colombian civilians killed then labbelled "killed in action"]. The army buried many underground. Many of them will be found in these mass graves. 

What might be the magnitude of these findings pits?  Terrible. Not even in the fifties when there was much brutality in Colombia could be compared to these new (rightwing paramilitaries) but the government has no willingness to investigate thoroughly, and will only bring back some graves. The timeframe is very long and technical difficulties for identification, chemical and DNA testing are enormous.

Prison director investigated over expansion of politician's cell http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/7848-prison-director-investigated-over-expansion-of-politicians-cell.html

investigating the director of Picota prison in Bogota, who allegedly allowed a jailed politician to double the size of his cell and paint the walls.According to INPEC boss Colonel Carlos Barrangan, prison director Enrique Arce withheld information and lied when INPEC asked him about the home-improvements jailed congressman Juan Carlos Martinez had performed in his cell.

The politician, in jail awaiting trial for his alleged ties to a paramilitary group, was assigned two inmate workmen who tore down the wall between the cell of the congressman and a neighboring cell, giving Martinez double the space. According to the INPEC, the politician also had been verbally abusive to prison guards without being punished.The INPEC has ordered the prison director to reconstruct the wall.La Picota prison is Bogota's largest penitentiary institution and home to dozens of politicians with (alleged) ties to paramilitaries.

European Parliament officials visit Colombia to investigate human rights abuses http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/7835-european-parliament-officials-visit-colombia-to-investigate-human-rights-abuse.html

Six European Parliament officials, and a Spanish senator, will be in Colombia until the end of January in order to investigate cases of human rights abuse. The officials will meet with local social organizations, international agencies, Colombian government representatives and judicial officials from Bogota, Medellin and Cali, reports Caracol Radio.One of the European Parliament representatives, Marian Suarez, announced on Monday that the international community is concerned about Colombian violations of the rights of women, trade unionists, and human rights activists.

The officials will collect testimony in order to compose and deliver a report to the European community.The inquiry was called for by the Spanish chair for the EU, due to concerns over the Colombian government's attitude to human rights, following the murder of trade unionists, extrajudicial killings by the army, and baseless imprisonment of social leaders and human rights activists.

Prosecutor general opens criminal investigation against Arias http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/7849-prosecutor-general-opens-criminal-investigation-against-arias.html

Colombia's prosecutor general has opened a preliminary investigation into former minister and current Conservative Party presidential hopeful Andres Felipe Arias for alleged corruption in the granting of agriculture subsidies, local media reported on Tuesday.The former minister is suspected of having granted large amounts of government money to powerful families who sponsored the project of seeking President Alvaro Uribe's re-election in May this year through a referendum.

The Prosecutor General's Office will investigate these accusations and will try to establish the extent to which Arias himself was involved in the fraudulent granting of the subsidies.The country's inspector general previously started a disciplinary investigation into the Conservative politician for the same reason.Arias left the Agriculture Ministry in 2008 to prepare for the presidential elections in May this year. Arias plans to run for president only if Uribe does not.

The governments and organizations gathered in Montreal to the situation in Haiti http://prensarural.org/spip/spip.php?article3529

We reject the militarization of the country as a false response to the recent disaster and the U.S. unilateral action to send more than 20,000 troops to safeguard its economic and geopolitical interests.-Vía Campesina The occupation troops in the past six years through MINUSTAH, did not contribute effectively to the stabilization nor the provision of infrastructure and public goods, and nothing indicates that maintaining this policy will be effective from now on.

We urge governments and international organizations to act immediatly and unconditionally cancell the external debt claimed to Haiti, where payment affects millions of lives. We also demand that the resources allocated for relief and reconstruction do not create new debt, or conditionalities that are imposed or any other form of external imposition which vitiates this goal, as is the practice of international financial institutions like World Bank, Bank or the IMF and so-called "donor countries". We also reject the private multinational companies exploit this tragedy to address business billionaires by rebuilding the country, as happened in Iraq, or exploit the cheap labor and exploit natural resources .

Does Gilbert Bigio make Israel look good? http://warincontext.org/2010/01/25/does-gilbert-bigio-make-israel-look-good/

Cite Soleil, a seaside shantytown of more than 300,000 people residing in homes made of cinder blocks with tin roofs, has been described as poorer than India’s infamous slums of Calcutta. It is also the home of the Bigio business empire. “Our purpose is to improve the quality of life of the communities we reach,” the GB Group says in its mission statement. A Haiti Information Project report from Cite Soleil published in January 2008 suggests otherwise.While the surrounding residents of Cite Soleil are forced to literally eat dirt to stave off hunger, Bigio is a billionaire whose family supported the first coup against Aristide and reportedly helped to back the movement that forced his second ouster in 2004.

One need not look very far to see where Gilbert Bigio’s interests lie in relation to Cite Soleil. According to his own company’s web site his family maintains controlling interests in sixteen of Haiti’s largest companies. They are also the largest Haitian partner in the wireless communications giant Digicel, a mammoth company based in Ireland that has nearly cornered the cellular market in the Caribbean. Bigio’s family is not merely wealthy amidst a sea of poverty stricken residents in Haiti, his family represents the Über-wealthy who have benefited most since Aristide’s second ouster in 2004.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US government blocked all of the Bigio family’s holdings in US banks following the brutal military coup against Aristide in 1991. Since Aristide’s second ousting in 2004, the financial wealth of the Bigio family along with those of other well off Haitian clans such as the Mevs, Brandts, Acras and Madsens have nearly doubled according to a confidential source at a private accounting firm.

Israel exploits Haiti for propaganda ...and Sri Lanka? http://www.ww4report.com/node/8255

All Week, Live Reports from Haiti – KPFA Radio: Among Other News, UN “Peacekeepers” Fire Rubber Bullets into Crowd http://hcvanalysis.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/all-week-live-reports-from-haiti-kpfa-radio-among-other-news-un-peacekeepers-fire-rubber-bullets-into-crowd/

HONDURAS: One Day Before the Inauguration of the New Puppets http://hondurasoye.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/honduras-one-day-before-the-inauguration-of-the-new-puppets/

Much is at stake, not just in Honduras, but across the Region. One immediate impact of the coup was to give courage and sustenance to reactionary forces in Panama and Costa Rica to finally come out into the open in their opposition to the process of Central American unity. Its most advanced recent expression was the SICA (Central American Integration System) and the C-4 Accord (through which citizens of Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala can travel between the four countries without a passport or visa — an important step towards establishing a common labor market, something prized by local capitalists). Costa Rican president Oscar Arias has made it clear that his country, if he has his way, will turn away from the SICA and join Panama and Colombia in a different sort of alliance, whether formal or informal.

That tripartite arrangement is a direct threat not only to Venezuela and Ecuador, which border on the Colombian narcostate (Washington´s South American “Israel”) but also against Nicaragua which has significant border disputes with both Colombia (maritime) and with Costa Rica (territorial disputes over the Rio San Juan and environmental issues stemming from the contamination of Costa Rican feeder rivers with heavy metals and other poisons).

Ambassador Chaderton denounces IACHR's biased actuation against Venezuela http://www.abn.info.ve/go_news5.php?articulo=217327&lee=17

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Burning the Rain Forest for Yogurt Burst Cheerios http://www.commondreams.org/further/2010/01/25-3

The Rainforest Action Network is campaigning against the burning of huge tracts of rainforest for palm oil plantations by General Mills and other companies, which have seen demand for the oil triple in the last five years. To learn more or insist on sourcing socially and environmentally responsible palm oil, go here. http://ga3.org/campaign/generalmills

Bush Pentagon Hired Conspiracy Theorist As Al Qaeda Specialist http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/pentagon_hired_saddam-bin_laden_theorist_mylroie.php?ref=mp

When the Pentagon's internal think tank decided in 2004 it needed a better understanding of Al Qaeda, it turned to an unlikely source: the terrorism analyst Laurie Mylroie, who was known as the chief purveyor of the discredited idea that Saddam Hussein was behind Sept. 11 and many other attacks carried out by Al Qaeda. Mylroie was paid roughly $75,000 to produce a 300-page study, "The History of Al Qaida," for the Defense Department think tank, known as the Office of Net Assessment, a DOD spokesman tells us.

Bush Pentagon Hired Conspiracy Theorist As Al Qaeda Specialist http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/pentagon_hired_saddam-bin_laden_theorist_mylroie.php?ref=mp

CONCLUSION The bourgeois media are inca

pable of telling the truth about the good works done by workers, regardless of the ideological stance of the propaganda outlet. The reactionary capitalist press falsely denies all good works by workers. The liberal capitalist press manipulatively denies almost all good works by workers. This incapacity for the expression of truth extends to Haiti and to other countries. A large sector of the US people are seriously brainwashed by the lying capitalist press.

Single Staffer Assigned To Oversee $2.5 Billion Dyncorp Iraq Contract http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/ig_single_staffer_assigned_to_oversee_25_billion_d.php

A new Inspector General report has revealed the State Department assigned just one oversight officer to a $2.5 billion police training contract awarded to private contractor DynCorp. The report, released Monday by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction is the second study showing there was lax or nonexistent oversight of Dyncorp’s police training contract. The Inspector General concluded: "Over $2.5 billion in U.S. funds are vulnerable to waste and fraud."

The report states for years the State Department had only one person in Iraq monitoring invoices during the early stages of the DynCorp contract, despite the complexity of the paperwork. This meant many invoices were not questioned and as a result there is "no confidence in the accuracy of payments of more than $1 billion to DynCorp." The audit found the three people currently employed in Iraq to oversee DynCorp’s work were still too few.

GOP Hopeful: People on Public Assistance "Like Stray Animals http://www.truthout.org/gop-hopeful-people-public-assistance-like-stray-animals56335

South Carolina’s Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has compared giving people government assistance to "feeding stray animals." Bauer, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, said:"My grandmother .. told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals..because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply.

They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so .. you've got to curtail that type of behavior." In South Carolina, 58 percent of students participate in the free and reduced-price lunch program. Bauer said the government should take away assistance if those receiving help didn't pass drug tests or attend parent-teacher conferences. Bauer added: "For the first time in the history of this country, we've got more people voting for a living than we do working for a living."