AUDIO-Bad News Guatemala: 43 union leaders murdered in three years http://www.radiomundoreal.fm/Bad-News?lang=es

From January, 2007, 43 union and peasant leaders have been murdered by paramilitary officers involved with companies and the government.The figures were published by the Unionist, Indigenous and Peasant Movement from Guatemala, a coalition of grassroots organizations which issued in February a report called “Guatemala: The price of union liberty”.The report finds that the situation in terms of human rights in Guatemala has worsened with President Alvaro Colom, who took office in January, 2008, and who considers himself a social-democrat.

In 2008, for instance, 16 leaders were murdered, while in 2006 one person was.In 2010, there have been already three murders. The latest one took place last week in San Marcos department. Octavio Roblero, member of the Front of Resistance in Defense of Natural Resources of Malacatan (FRENA) was the victim.The report also states that the murders were carried out with firearms, and that 98% of the murders took place shortly after some kind of conflict related to labour claims or defense of resources, and in most cases people where threatened.

comment-yes the nations with  worst record of human rigths violations(colombia,peru,guatemala,panama,honduras),against indigneous,peasents,trade unions,are the very same one's with fta(freetrade agreements)with us gov,the same one's that washington praises for being democratic,while those nations wich do protect unions,indigneous and enviroment,are called authoritarian,and undemocratic...

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Ex-senator's 'parapolitics' trial kicks off in Cali http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/8426-ex-senators-qparapoliticsq-trial-kicks-off-in-cali.html

The trial of the former president of Colombia´s Congress and leader of the Conservative party, who stands accused of ties to paramilitaries, began Thursday in Cali.Carlos Garcia Orjuela, the ex-leader of the Partido de la U, is accused of allying with paramilitary groups in the Tolima department in exchange for votes in the 2002 congressional elections. He is currently being held in La Picota prison, south of Bogota.

To date, 62 members of Congress have been accused of paramilitary ties in the "parapolitics" scandal that rocked President Uribe's administration in 2007. Thirty-three have either been arrested or are currently in jail awaiting trial, including the president's cousin Mario Uribe Escobar, another former president of Congress.

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Mossad 'factory' churned out fake Australian passports http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/26/2830764.htm?section=justin

A former Mossad officer has alleged the Israeli spy agency has its own "passport factory" to create or doctor passports for use in intelligence operations.Relations between Australia and Israel are under strain after three Australian passports were apparently used by suspects in the killing of top Hamas leader Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in Dubai last month. Dubai police say they are 99 per cent sure Mossad was behind the operation to smother Mabhouh with a pillow in his hotel room.

"They need passports because you can't go around with an Israeli passport, not even a forged one, and get away or get involved with people from the Arab world," he said."They'll shy away right away. So most of these [Mossad] operations are carried out on what's called false flag, which means you pretend to be of another country which is less belligerent to those countries that you're trying to recruit from."If they can obtain blank passports, which they have in the past from Canada, from England, they do. If not, they just manufacture them."

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SPINWATCH-Daniel Artana // Why Banco del Sur Is a bad idea...http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=88828

What is the role for a new institution like Banco del Sur? The very concept of Banco del Sur defies basic tenets of international lending and development. Should it ever come to pass, Banco del Sur will have a negative effect on the region's development and credit worthiness and dearly cost its members.

There are other organizations that already provide lending support and services in Latin America based on much more sustainable and market-logical criteria. Simplifying, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is there to provide liquidity (and those that do not like it can self-insure through the accumulation of foreign reserves), and the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Corporacion Andina de Fomento (CAF) are there to finance social and infrastructure projects in the region.

comment-im laughing my ass off reading this shill's argument against banco del sur,while recommending imf...hes arguing for this imf ...Latin America - IMF: portrait of a serial killer http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article340

Plunder and Profit The IMF http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/IMF_WB/Plunder_Profit_IMF_WB.html

PRIVATIZATION & PLUNDER http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1991/05/collins.html

The IMF and the WORLD BANK: Puppets of the Neoliberal Onslaught http://www.mit.edu/~thistle/v13/2/imf.html

who is daniel artana?...hes affiliated with ,Latin American Economic Research Foundation (FEEL)(Foundation for Economic Research on Latin America)http://ideas.repec.org/e/par184.html

and Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department. heres some backround on inter-american development bank...Report indicts U.S. government and Inter-American Development Bank http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Haiti/Report_Indicts_US_Haiti.html

In 1998, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) awarded $54 million in loans to the Haitian government to improve the country's patchwork, crumbling public-water system. The money was intended to bring clean water to people who for many years had been denied this basic human right, with devastating consequences for public health. Ten years later, however, this desperately needed money has not produced a single improvement to Haiti's water supply in the city designated to be one of the first recipients.

Groups Protest Inter-American Development Bank’s http://ran.org/media_center/news_article/?uid=4743

“As a major source of financing for economic and social development in Latin America, the IDB has a responsibility not to fund environmental destruction and human rights abuses,” said Andrea Samulon of Rainforest Action Network. “The IDB is shirking that duty, and its mechanism for accountability on these issues is practically nonexistent.”

Caña Brava dam protest: More than 300 take over IDB's Brazil office http://www.bicusa.org/en/Article.2132.aspx

Inter-American Development Bank Governors Challenged to Account for Capital Increase Request http://www.amazonwatch.org/newsroom/view_news.php?id=2011

yes hes a mouthpiece for imf ,inter-american development bank!!!

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Beyond Supply and Demand: Obama’s Drug Wars in Latin America https://nacla.org/node/6429

The drug war has failed to achieve even its stated goals, as critics have long emphasized—there has been no net decrease in illicit drug production and trafficking, even while the devastating human and environmental costs of drug war militarism continue to rise. Meanwhile, rarely discussed is the drug war’s great success in helping to achieve unstated goals: extending global U.S. military hegemony and extending the reach of the legal U.S. drug economy, which often depends on raw materials and consumer markets in the very same territories forced to participate in the U.S.-led drug control regime.

Yet the administration’s acknowledgement of “shared responsibilities” has helped only to cement the ongoing militarization of the region. The devastating impact of this approach has been well documented: increased levels of violence, political corruption, and a blurring of the line between the police, the military, and drug cartels in ways that profoundly undermine democracy and human rights.Bolivia again provides a useful example of how drug war spectacle masks political conflict and how decertification is used as a tool to criminalize challenges to U.S. hegemony.

The Obama administration’s decertification of Bolivia, continuing the Bush administration’s policy by maintaining Bolivia’s suspension from the ATDPEA, defies any rational, fact-based justification.22 It seems instead to be a retaliatory move for actions the Bolivian government took in the fall of 2008, when it did not renew USAID contracts, accused the DEA of spying, expelled the U.S. ambassador, and alleged that the United States was providing covert support to the violent and economically powerful U.S.-aligned opposition.23