Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalUS Continues Ransoming Development Aid, Now Using CAFTA to Threaten Social Programs
US Continues Ransoming Development Aid, Now Using CAFTA to Threaten Social Programs
April 11, 2014.
The US’s ransoming of development aid has entered a new phase in El Salvador. Not content with the passage of the controversial Public-Private Partnership (P3) Law, nor with its modification by way of various reforms, the US government has now unleashed a new series of conditions it claims necessary for the disbursement of nearly $300 million in Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) development funding. This time, it’s the groundbreaking social programs and reforms initiated by the nation’s first progressive government in the crosshairs.
On Tuesday, April 8, John Barrett, economic advisor at the US Embassy in San Salvador, revealed “concerns” the US Trade Representative has about El Salvador’s compliance with the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), referring specifically to the FMLN-Funes administration’s family farming program, which provides domestic, non-genetically modified (GMO) seeds to small scale farmers to promote local production and food sovereignty. In fact, the US government’s concerns go beyond just subsidized sustainable agriculture. The US Trade Representative’s 2014 report on El Salvador also includes anxieties about the National Healthcare Reform’s measure to allow the Ministry of Health to purchase pharmaceuticals without an open bidding process (allowing them to buy cheaper medicines from Venezuela and Cuba) and the 2012 Medications Law, which regulates El Salvador’s notoriously extortionate medicine prices. In effect, the US government is holding the MCC funds hostage in order to advocate for the interests of Monsanto and Big Pharma at the expense of the vast majority of the Salvadoran people.
El Salvador has already met the conditions established by the MCC board required to qualify for the funding. Nevertheless, the US continues to surprise the country with ever-more conditions. The US’s unending demands on El Salvador’s policy makers exposes the MCC funds as a mere mechanism for the imposition of US commercial interests. With a new FMLN administration poised to assume power on June 1st, the United States appears intent on undermining further attempts to build sustainable, equitable, alternative development initiatives and rolling back existing ones. The invocation of CAFTA against the pioneering actions of the country’s first FMLN government lays bare a struggle between two opposing models of governance, one that protects the interests of a small, corporate elite, and one that serves the popular majority.
http://www.cispes.org/blog/us-continues-ransoming-development-aid-now-using-cafta-threaten-social-programs/
El Salvador Is Imprisoning Women Who Miscarry
El Salvador Is Imprisoning Women Who Miscarry
By Eric Lemus
April 27, 2014 | 7:51 am
El Salvador is one of five Latin American countries, along with Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominican Republic, and Chile, that does not allow any form of abortion, in any circumstance — and scores of women have been imprisoned for suffering miscarriages.
Earlier this month, feminist and pro-choice groups launched a campaign to officially pardon 17 women who have been convicted of aggravated homicide after being admitted to public hospitals with failed pregnancies.
On April 1, the campaigners protested in the streets of San Salvador and organized a procession starting at Ilapongo’s Rehabilitation Center For Women, where the accused women are being held.
New prosecutions bring scrutiny to female genital cutting. Read more here.
The organizations also petitioned Salvadorian Congress, filing an appeal under the Special Law for Appeals of Grace, which is allowed to grant pardons, and could do so in this case if all three State powers — legislative, executive and judicial — approve.
More:
https://news.vice.com/articles/el-salvador-is-imprisoning-women-who-miscarry
Peru Considers Allowing Military to Again Shoot Down Drug-Smuggling Planes
Source: Wall Street Journal
Peru Considers Allowing Military to Again Shoot Down Drug-Smuggling Planes
Government Has Program Under Review as It Seeks to Fight Cocaine Trade
By Robert Kozak
April 25, 2014 10:11 p.m. ET
LIMA, Peru—The government of Peru said Friday it is reviewing whether to allow its military to shoot down suspected drug-smuggling aircraft again, just three days after neighboring Bolivia said it would permit its air force to do so.
Peru suspended the program in 2001 after the military accidentally shot down a civilian Cessna carrying an American missionary family, killing a woman and her 7-month-old daughter. The tragedy led to international criticism of the policy, which had been carried out over Peru by Peruvian pilots with American logistical assistance.
But now Peru has become the biggest exporter of cocaine, according to the country's antidrug czar Carmen Masías, prompting the government to ratchet up its war on cocaine traffickers and their smuggling routes.
Defense Ministry officials have publicly suggested that aerial interdiction should be considered again. Most of the smuggling flights go to Brazil, a major consumer of cocaine as well as a jumping off point for drugs headed to Africa and Europe.
Read more: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303834304579524481929143854
Brazil ex-colonel who admitted torture killed
Source: Al Jazeera
Brazil ex-colonel who admitted torture killed
Paulo Malhaes found dead after testifying last month to carrying out torture during Brazil's 1964 to 1985 military rule.
Last updated: 26 Apr 2014 08:00
A retired Brazilian colonel who last month admitted carrying out torture during the country's 1964-1985 military rule has been found dead following a break-in at his suburban Rio home, police have said.
Paulo Malhaes, 76, was killed after three men broke into the family property in the northern suburb of Novo Iguacu on Thursday, his widow told police on Friday.
"An evaluation of the scene has already been undertaken and the wife of the victim and their valet have been questioned. The latter will be able to help produce a photofit," a police spokesman told the AFP news agency.
Police said the men held the couple and the valet in separate rooms on Thursday night before killing the colonel and escaping with a number of firearms he collected.
Read more: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/04/brazil-ex-colonel-who-admitted-torture-killed-201442652334374680.html
The Brazilian military dictatorship was supported by the United States.
[center]
Colonel Paulo Malhaes [/center]
Beverly Bell: Indigenous People In Honduras Block Dam on Sacred River
Beverly Bell: Indigenous People In Honduras Block Dam on Sacred River
April 25, 2014
Despite U.S.-backed violence against them, the Rio Blanco community is fighting back.
By Beverly Bell
By arrangement with On The Commons
“Screw the company trying to take our river, and the government. If I die, I’m going to die defending life.” So said María Santos Dominguez, a member of the Indigenous Council of the Lenca community of Rio Blanco, Honduras.
April 1 marked one year since the Rio Blanco community began a human barricade that has so far stopped a corporation from constructing a dam that would privatize and destroy the sacred Gualcarque River. Adults and children have successfully blocked the road to the river with a stick-and-wire fence, a trench and their bodies. Only one of many communities fighting dams across Honduras, the families of Rio Blanco stand out for their tenacity and for the violence unleashed upon them.
The Honduran-owned, internationally backed DESA Corporation has teamed up with U.S.–funded Honduran soldiers and police, private guards, and paid assassins to try to break the opposition. Throughout the past year,they have killed, shot, maimed, kidnapped and threatened the residents of Rio Blanco. The head of DESA, David Castillo, is a West Point graduate. He also served as assistant to the director of the miliary intelligence and maintains close ties to the Honduran Armed Forces.
[center]This was the second machete attack Roque Dominguez suffered since the community began its blockade.[/center]
María Santos Dominguez’s prediction that she would die defending life almost came true. On March 5, seven people attacked her as she was on her way home from cooking food at the local school. They assaulted her with machetes, rocks, and sticks. When her husband, Roque Dominguez, heard that she was surrounded, he and their 12-year-old son Paulo ran to the scene. The men brutalized them as well. They brought a machete down on the child’s head, deeply slashing his face, cutting his ear in half, and fracturing his skull. Dominguez’s hand was severely injured, and he also suffered cuts to the face. (Friends of the Earth has organized a petition to urge the Honduran government to investigate, which you can sign here).
More:
http://www.guernicamag.com/daily/beverly-bell-indigenous-people-in-honduras-block-dam-on-sacred-river/
The Dirty Hand of the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela
Weekend Edition April 25-27, 2014
Agents of Destabilization
The Dirty Hand of the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela
by EVA GOLINGER
Anti-government protests in Venezuela that seek regime change have been led by several individuals and organizations with close ties to the US government. Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado- two of the public leaders behind the violent protests that started in February – have long histories as collaborators, grantees and agents of Washington. The National Endowment for Democracy “NED” and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have channeled multi-million dollar funding to Lopez’s political parties Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular, and Machado’s NGO Sumate and her electoral campaigns.
These Washington agencies have also filtered more than $14 million to opposition groups in Venezuela between 2013 and 2014, including funding for their political campaigns in 2013 and for the current anti-government protests in 2014. This continues the pattern of financing from the US government to anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela since 2001, when millions of dollars were given to organizations from so-called “civil society” to execute a coup d’etat against President Chavez in April 2002. After their failure days later, USAID opened an Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Caracas to, together with the NED, inject more than $100 million in efforts to undermine the Chavez government and reinforce the opposition during the following 8 years.
At the beginning of 2011, after being publically exposed for its grave violations of Venezuelan law and sovereignty, the OTI closed its doors in Venezuela and USAID operations were transferred to its offices in the US. The flow of money to anti-government groups didn’t stop, despite the enactment by Venezuela’s National Assembly of the Law of Political Sovereignty and National Self-Determination at the end of 2010, which outright prohibits foreign funding of political groups in the country. US agencies and the Venezuelan groups that receive their money continue to violate the law with impunity. In the Obama Administration’s Foreign Operations Budgets, between $5-6 million have been included to fund opposition groups in Venezuela through USAID since 2012.
The NED, a “foundation” created by Congress in 1983 to essentially do the CIA’s work overtly, has been one of the principal financiers of destabilization in Venezuela throughout the Chavez administration and now against President Maduro. According to NED’s 2013 annual report, the agency channeled more than $2.3 million to Venezuelan opposition groups and projects. Within that figure, $1,787,300 went directly to anti-government groups within Venezuela, while another $590,000 was distributed to regional organizations that work with and fund the Venezuelan opposition. More than $300,000 was directed towards efforts to develop a new generation of youth leaders to oppose Maduro’s government politically.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/25/the-dirty-hand-of-the-national-endowment-for-democracy-in-venezuela/
Reagan Redux Honduras: Gangsters’ Paradise
Weekend Edition April 25-27, 2014
Reagan Redux
Honduras: Gangsters’ Paradise
by NICK ALEXANDROV
Nearly five years after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) first called on the Honduran government to protect Carlos Mejía Orellana, the Radio Progreso marketing manager was found stabbed to death in his home on April 11. “The IACHR and its Office of the Special Rapporteur consider this a particularly serious crime given the precautionary measures granted,” the Commission stated, assuming Mejía really was being guarded. But since the 2009 coup, asking the Honduran state to defend journalists is as effective as entreating a spider to spare a web-ensnared fly.
The coup, which four School of the Americas (SOA) graduates oversaw, toppled elected president Manuel Zelaya, and was “a crime,” as even the military lawyer—another SOA alum—charged with giving the overthrow a veneer of legitimacy couldn’t deny. A pair of marred general elections followed. Journalist Michael Corcoran recognized widespread “state violence against dissidents” and “ballot irregularities” as hallmarks of the first, in November 2009, which Obama later hailed as the return of Honduran democracy. And there was little dispute that the subsequent contest, held last November, was equally flawed. The State Department, for example, admitted “inconsistencies” plagued the vote, the same charge Zelaya himself leveled and an echo of the SOA Watch delegation’s findings, which identified “numerous irregularities and problems during the elections and vote counting process[.]” But while grassroots and governmental observers described the election in similar terms, they drew dramatically different conclusions about its validity. Canadian activist Raul Burbano, for example, acknowledged that “corruption, fraud, violence, murder, and human rights violations” dominated the situation. For Secretary of State Kerry, “the election process was generally transparent, peaceful, and reflected the will of the Honduran people.”
Kerry, to be sure, was referring to the class of “worthy” Hondurans, whose will was indeed reflected in the contest. One might be “a policeman, a lumber magnate, an agro-industrialist, a congressman, a mayor, an owner of a national media outlet, a cattle rancher, a businessman, or a drug trafficker”—all belong to this sector, Radio Progreso director Rev. Ismael Moreno Coto, S.J., known as Padre Melo, points out, adding that these “worthy” Hondurans use the state as a tool to maintain, if not enhance, their power. The results for the rest of the population are what you’d expect. The government no longer pays many of its employees, for example; Peter J. Meyer’s Congressional Research Service report on “Honduran-U.S. Relations,” released last July, cites “misused government funds” and “weak tax collection” as two factors contributing to the current situation, a kind of wage slavery sans wages. Doctors, nurses and educators toil for free throughout the country, and the Center for Economic and Policy Research reported last fall that over 43% of Honduran workers labored full-time in 2012 without receiving the minimum wage. That same year, nearly half of the population was living in extreme poverty—the rate had dropped to 36% under Zelaya—and 13,000 inmates now crowd a prison system designed for 8,000. In San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city after Tegucigalpa, some 5,000 children try not to starve to death while living on the streets; this figure includes 3,000 girls, aged 12-17, who roam the roads as prostitutes.
Confronting this reality—asking fundamental questions, like whose interests dominant Honduran institutions serve—“means living with anxiety, insecurity, suspicion, distrust, demands, warnings, and threats. It also means having to come to grips with the idea of death,” Padre Melo emphasizes, explaining that a reporter in Honduras “only has to publish or disseminate some news that negatively affects the interests [of] a powerful person with money and influence…for the life of that news reporter to be endangered.” Melo was making these points in July 2012, well before Mejía’s recent murder, but when it was already obvious that open season had been declared on Honduran correspondents. It’s likely that “few observers could have foreseen the deluge of threats, attacks, and targeted killings that has swept through Honduras during the last five years,” PEN International noted in January, highlighting “the surge in violence directed against journalists following the ouster of President José Manuel Zelaya in June 2009.” A great deal “of the violence is produced by the state itself, perhaps most significantly by a corrupt police force,” and now over 32 Honduran journalists—the equivalent U.S. figure, as a percentage of the total population, would be well over 1,200—are dead.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/25/honduras-gangsters-paradise/
Chiquita asks US to dismiss mass lawsuit over 4,000 killings in Colombia
Source: Colombia Reports
Chiquita asks US to dismiss mass lawsuit over 4,000 killings in Colombia
Apr 25, 2014 posted by Oliver Sheldon
The multinational fruit and vegetable company, Chiquita Brands International, has asked a US Federal Court to dismiss a lawsuit filed against them by families of victims of paramilitary violence in Colombia, reported national media.
Chiquita Brands in 2007 was fined $25 million after being found guilty of paying $1.7 million to now-defunct paramilitary umbrella group AUC , between 1997 and 2004.
Chiquita has argued that the claims should be rejected because although they made the payments, it can’t be asserted that they were directly linked to the thousands of deaths caused by the paramilitaries, reported Colombia’s Santa Fe Radio.
John Hall, a lawyer for the company, told a US court that any legal action taken by the families of victims should take place in Colombia.
Attorney for the Colombian plaintiffs, Paul Hoffman, said that the American justice system does have jurisdiction over the case because Chiquita headquarters was based in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the time, and made payment decisions from that location.
Read more: http://colombiareports.co/chiquita-asks-us-dismiss-mass-lawsuit-4000-killings-colombia/#prettyPhoto
Oldest ex-Major League Baseball player dies in Cuba aged 102
23 April 2014 Last updated at 22:49 ET
Oldest ex-Major League Baseball player dies in Cuba aged 102
[font size=1]
Connie Marrero posing with a self-autographed baseball Conrado Marrero was renowned for his love of cigars and
constant wisecracks as well as his game[/font]
The oldest former player with Major League Baseball, Conrado "Connie" Marrero, has died at home in Havana at the age of 102.
Marrero first made his name in Cuba in the 1930s - but went on to have a late career surge in Washington in the 50s.
He was also a hero in his home country, where he returned after the 1959 revolution.
Marrero's death, confirmed by relatives, came just two days before his 103rd birthday.
'Living legend'
Marrero debuted for the Washington Senators at the relatively old age of almost 39, a signing initially dismissed as a joke, says the BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Havana.
~snip~
[font size=1]
Marrero (left) played for the Washington Senators in the 1950s[/font]
More:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-27137076
Transgender people voted for the first time in El Salvador's history
March 26, 2014 08:14
Transgender people voted for the first time in El Salvador's history
With victory in tow, rights groups now push new president to end violence, corruption and discrimination.
SAN SALVADOR and NEW YORK—Rubi Navas is among the first transgender women in the history of El Salvador to be allowed to vote.
In previous years, Rubi and her peers were normally barred from voting, because their physical appearances don’t match the masculine birth names on their national identification cards. The few who were able to cast ballots were lucky; an unusually progressive election official had probably let them by.
But on Feb. 1, three days before the first round of the 2014 Salvadoran presidential elections, the country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal proclaimed that all people must be allowed to vote, without discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
While recent historic advances, like this one, were made by the administration of outgoing president Mauricio Funes, questions remain about whether his successor, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, will take the same proactive stance.
More:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/rights/el-salvador-transgender-vote-first-time-history-lgbt
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