Archive for November, 2007

Another CIA sponsered Coup DÉtat? Venezuela’s D-Day: Democratic Socialism or Imperial Counter-Revolution

Thursday, November 29th, 2007

By Prof James Petras 11/28/07 “ICH” — - On November 26, 2007 the Venezuelan government broadcast and circulated a confidential memo from the US embassy to the CIA which is devastatingly revealing of US clandestine operations and which will influence the referendum this Sunday (December 2, 2007). The memo sent by an embassy official, Michael Middleton Steere, was addressed to the head of the CIA, Michael Hayden. The memo was entitled ‘Advancing to the Last Phase of Operation Pincer’ and updates the activity by a CIA unit with the acronym ‘HUMINT’ (Human Intelligence) which is engaged in clandestine action to destabilize the forth-coming referendum and coordinate the civil military overthrow of the elected Chavez government. The Embassy-CIA’s polls concede that 57% of the voters approved of the constitutional amendments proposed by Chavez but also predicted a 60% abstention.  (more…)

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A Summary of United Nations Agreements on Human Rights

Wednesday, November 28th, 2007

A Summary of United Nations Agreements on Human Rights

Contents

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Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The UDHR is the first international statement to use the term “human rights”, and has been adopted by the Human Rights movement as a charter. It is short, and worth reading in its entirety — a summary would be about as long as the document itself.

Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
This covenant details the basic civil and political rights of individuals and nations. Among the rights of nations are:

Among the rights of individuals are:

(more…)

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A Very Capitalist Disaster: Naomi Klein’s Take on the Neoliberal Saga

Monday, November 26th, 2007

A critical review of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007)
Walden Bello* (http://www.focusweb.org) 


     Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism is very impressive indeed. This is, however, not immediately evident, a sense that is confirmed by Joseph Stiglitz’ review of the book. Even before I read it, I was certain that the Nobel laureate would highlight Klein’s attempt to make a connection between the electric shock experiments performed by the notorious McGill University psychologist Ewen Cameron who was on contract with the CIA and the economic shock approach developed by Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago.


     And indeed, he does, in the course of writing a typical New York Times Book Review piece that dares not evince too much enthusiasm for a book that comes from left field lest it provoke the ever-alert watchdogs of the right to question one’s credentials. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/books/review/Stiglitz-t.html). Stiglitz, in fact, suggests that Klein’s analysis might be infected with conspiracy theory with his very first sentence: “[T]here are no accidents in the world as seen by Naomi Klein.” The Nobel laureate does have some positive things to say about the book, but he neutralizes this by dropping the line that Klein “is not an academic and must not be judged as one.” As for Klein’s central concept of “disaster capitalism,” it is mentioned once but otherwise ignored. It all adds up to damning with faint praise. (more…)

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Latin America’s Shock Resistance

Monday, November 26th, 2007

Focus on Trade. Number 134, November 2007 http://www.focusweb.org

Naomi Klein*   

   IN less than two years, the lease on the largest and most important US military base in Latin America will run out. The base is in Manta, Ecuador, and Rafael Correa, the country’s leftist president, has pronounced that he will renew the lease “on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami - an Ecuadorean base. If there is no problem having foreign soldiers on a country’s soil, surely they’ll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States.”   Since an Ecuadorean military outpost in South Beach is a long shot, it is very likely that the Manta base, which serves as a staging area for the “war on drugs,” will soon shut down. Correa’s defiant stand is not, as some have claimed, about anti-Americanism. Rather, it is part of a broad range of measures being taken by Latin American governments to make the continent less vulnerable to externally provoked crises and shocks. (more…)

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Coup D’Etat Rumblings in Venezuela

Wednesday, November 21st, 2007

By Stephen Lendman11/20/07 “ICH” — — The Bush administration tried and failed three prior times to oust Hugo Chavez since its first aborted two-day coup attempt in April, 2002. Through FOIA requests, lawyer, activist and author Eva Golinger uncovered top secret CIA documents of US involvement that included an intricate financing scheme involving the quasi-governmental agency, National Endowment of Democracy (NED), and US Agency for International Development (USAID). The documents also showed the White House, State Department and National Security Agency had full knowledge of the scheme, had to have approved it, and there’s little doubt of CIA involvement as it’s always part of this kind of dirty business. What’s worrying now is what went on then may be happening again in what looks like a prelude to a fourth made-in-Washington attempt to oust the Venezuelan leader that must be monitored closely as events develop. (more…)

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