Ever since the US-supported coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela failed in April 2002, Washington has been pursuing a variety of strategies to remove the overwhelmingly popular South American head of state from power. Multimillion-dollar funding to anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela … has increased exponentially over the past ten years, as has direct political support through advisors, strategists and consultants- all aiming to help an unpopular and outdated opposition rise to power..
Stupid, petty, vindictive, short-sighted, counter-productive, a huge diplomatic faux pas. These are the some of the words that could be used to describe the U.S. decision not to issue a special license to allow the Trinidad Hilton hotel to host the Cuba-CARICOM Summit in Port of Spain on December 8…
Unwelcome meddling by the United States Trinidad Express
US out of step on Cuba Trinidad Guardian
Shame on the USA! Federation of Independent Trade Unions
CARICOM’S stinging rebuke to the United States Rickey Singh
Blunder after blunder Raffique Shah
Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister apologises to President Raul Castro Trinidad Guardian
SPECIAL STATEMENT BY HEADS OF STATE AND GOVERNMENT OF CARICOM AND CUBA
From the Guardian (UK) 18 November 2011
Imagine that an opposition organiser were murdered in broad daylight in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador or Venezuela by masked gunmen, or kidnapped and murdered by armed guards of a well-known supporter of the government. It would be front page news in the New York Times, and all over the TV news. The US State Department would issue a strong statement of concern over grave human rights abuses. If this were ever to happen…
Information released by WikiLeaks points to a continuation of U.S. dominance and the application of “neo-imperialist” diplomacy in Latin America. The cables regarding Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, exemplify the persistence of U.S. interference…
After weeks of high profile media attention and commentary in the wider society the report of the Manatt Commission of Enquiry and the extradition request from the United States for Mr. Christopher Coke has been tabled in the Jamaican parliament. It has been greeted with much disapproval and scepticism and has reinforced the view held all along by the majority of the population that nothing was going to come out of it…
Leaked US Embassy cables show how ‘Washington and its allies, including Big Oil majors like ExxonMobil and Chevron, maneuvered aggressively behind the scenes to scuttle the PetroCaribe deal’ between Haiti and Venzuela, which would save Haiti $100 million a year and provide financing for providing basic goods and services for 10 million Haitians.
An agreement brokered by the presidents of, Colombia and Venezuela has paved the way for ousted President Manuel Zelaya to return to Honduras and for that country to be reincorporated into the OAS. Two articles analyse the agreement and the current political situation.
Zelaya has sought to return to Honduras ever since the military coup that expelled him, but was prevented by criminal charges filed in Honduras’ corrupt and internationally condemned ‘justice’ system. Undoubtedly, he is interested in returning for the June 28, 2011 launch of the constitutional convention process by the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP)…
As dreadful as Bin Laden was, modern international terrorism did not begin with him. As quiet as it is kept, international terrorism did not begin on September 11, 2001. Before Osama Bin Laden, there was Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles, also known as Posada Carriles or “Bambi”, according to a de-classified CIA file…
No More Murder In Our Names! Peoples Empowerment Party, Barbados
The Assassination of Osama Bin Laden, Fidel Castro
Bin Laden is Dead: What Next? IraqVeterans Against War
A Nobel Prizewinner Without Scruples Atilio A. Boron
Targeted killing: the ethics and realpolitic of assassination The Economist
The polarisation of the debate around WikiLeaks is pretty simple, really. Of all the governments in the world, the United States government is the greatest threat to world peace and security today. This is obvious to anyone who looks at the facts with a modicum of objectivity…
In June of last year, when the Honduran military overthrew the social democratic government of Manuel Zelaya, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador took it personally. “We have intelligence reports that say that after Zelaya, I’m next,” said Correa…
With votes secured from the official National Liberation Party (PLN), the Libertarian Movement, and Justo Orozco, the evangelical congressman from the Costa Rican Renovation party, on July 1st, the Costa Rican Congress authorized the entry into that country of 46 warships from the U.S. Navy, 200 helicopters and combat aircraft and 7,000 Marines. ..
The U.S. government demanded that Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding extradite a drug dealer. When Venezuela made similar demands on Washington, for arguably the Hemisphere’s most notorious terrorist, the Justice Department brushed off the request…
WHILE Jamaica’s security forces intensify their hunt for most wanted reputed dealer in illicit drugs and guns, Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, for extradition to the USA, Venezuela has chosen to increase its pressure for Washington to extradite to Caracas a most wanted terrorist….
Richard Drayton, who is of Caribbean origin, is Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at King’s College, University of London. This article appeared in The Guardian on June 14, 2010
The many allegations of human rights abuses committed by the Jamaican security forces – including extrajudicial killings and the disposal of bodies – have received almost no international attention. Nor have the linkages between the Jamaican crisis, the security establishments in the US, Britain and Canada, and the mutations of the “war on terror”…
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This article was accessed from, NewsOne For Black America and has been published widely on the Internet. It refers to several sources published over the last 30 years that discuss the role of the CIA in the creation and/or encouragement of the infamous ‘Shower, Posse’ as part of the policy to destablise the Michael Manley-led government of Jamaica in the 1970s.
With the recent violence in Jamaica and the controversy over alleged drug lord, Christopher “Dudus” Coke, many people are talking about the infamous Jamaican Shower Posse and the neighborhood of Tivoli Gardens, where they have their base. What is being is being ignored largely by the media, is the role that the American government and the CIA had in training, arming and giving power to the Shower Posse…
by Katherine Haas, Council on Hemipsheric Affairs
Essentially, U.S. policy has been a source of benign neglect, with the continuation of a drug policy that does not emphasize the demand factor, despite words to the contrary. Certainly, the White House has no intention of taking on any new, big ticket programs. There is no evidence that the Department of State possesses the means or the vision for a new policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean that will dare to think the unthinkable…
Larry Birns is Director of COHA, The Council on Hemispheric Affairs
The staging of the Honduran presidential election on November 29 was meant to represent a satisfactory resolution of the Honduran crisis in Washington’s thinking. But to short-sighted U.S. policymakers, the magnitude and prohibitive costs of their maladroit strategy are being left out of the equation…
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Brazil’s Unavoidable Differences With Washington Mark Weisbrot
National Resistance Front: Elections were a farce
A small group of rich people who own most of Honduras and its politicians enlist the military to kidnap the elected president at gunpoint and take him into exile. They then arrest thousands of people opposed to the coup, shut down and intimidate independent media, shoot and kill some demonstrators, torture and beat many others. This goes on for more than four months, including more than two of the three months legally designated for electoral campaigning. Then the dictatorship holds an “election.”…
