U.S. Government Ties El Salvador USD 277 M Aid Package to Monsanto’s GMO Seeds

U.S. Government Ties El Salvador USD 277 M Aid Package to Monsanto’s GMO Seeds
June 9, 2014

The President of the El Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technologies (CESTA), Ricardo Navarro, has demanded that the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, Mari Carmen Aponte, stops pressurizing the Government of El Salvador to buy Monsanto’s GM seeds rather than non-GMO seeds from domestic suppliers.

“I would like to tell the U.S. Ambassador to stop pressuring the Government (of El Salvador) to buy ‘improved’ GM seeds,” said Navarro, which is only of benefit to U.S. multinationals and is to the detriment of local seed production, Verdad Digital reported last week.

In recent weeks, the U.S. has been pushing the El Salvadoran Government to sign the second Millennium Challenge Compact. One of the main conditions on the agreement is allegedly for the purchasing of GM seeds from Monsanto.

At the end of 2013 it was announced that without ‘specific’ economic and environmental policy reforms, the U.S. government would not provide El Salvador with $277 million in aid money through the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is a U.S. foreign aid agency that was created by the U.S. Congress in January 2004. According to the MCC they “have changed the conversation on how best to deliver ‘smart’ U.S. foreign assistance by focusing on ‘good’ policies.”

U.S. Failure To Isolate Cuba Highlighted At Recent OAS Bloc Meeting

U.S. Failure To Isolate Cuba Highlighted At Recent OAS Bloc Meeting

HAVANA, June 10 (BERNAMA- NNN-Prensa Latina) -- The recent General Assembly for the Organization of American States (OAS), held in Paraguay, proved that the United States is increasingly alone in its policy of isolating Cuba from the rest of the world, the Granma newspaper highlighted.

Cuba's leading newspaper emphasized in an article that "although the subject is not on the official agenda, the discussion about Cuba's participation in the coming Americas Summit," scheduled for next year in Panama, "was at the center of a good part of last week's event, June 3-5."

Evidently, Cuba's sister countries in the region are not inclined to tolerate another fifty years of injustice, and they wasted no opportunity to make that known, said Granma, emphasizing the failure of the hostile policies and isolation imposed by Washington against the island.

Cuba's attendance at the summit, which gathers the Heads of State and Government throughout the continent every three years, has been called for by the Latin American and Caribbean community ever since the first summit was held in Miami in 1994.

More:
http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v7/wn/newsworld.php?id=1044987

Tiananmen Square & Venezuela’s Caracazo: A Tale of Two Massacres

June 09, 2014
Tiananmen Square & Venezuela’s Caracazo

A Tale of Two Massacres

by DANIEL KOVALIK


One cannot escape the ample media coverage of the 25th anniversary of what has come to be known as the Tiananmen Square massacre, in which it is estimated that at least 300, and possibly 3000 civilians, were killed by state forces. [1] Of course, that is a tragedy which deserves remembering and commemorating. And, this commemorating should be done in an honest way. Without belaboring this point too much, it is worth noting that there has been much mythologizing about the events in China twenty-five years ago, and I urge readers to check out both the Columbia School of Journalism [2] and Nikolas Kristoff’s New York Times account from that time period. [3]

Another event, which took place 25 years ago, also deserves commemorating. This event, which the U.S. media has almost entirely ignored, involved the state murder of hundreds (at least 300), if not thousands (possibly 3,000) of protestors in Venezuela. [4] In other words, the estimates of those protestors killed in Venezuela are identical to the estimates of those killed in Beijing. Of course, given that Venezuela has a tiny population (around 30 million) compared to that of China (over 1 billion), these numbers are proportionately much greater.

And moreover, these events in Venezuela, now known as the Caracazo, led to historic change in Venezuela and Latin America as they would lead to the political rise of Hugo Chavez who opposed the Caracazo massacre and who would become President ten years later in great part due to the population’s reaction to it. And, as Noam Chomsky has opined, Chavez’s leadership in turn led to “the historic liberation of Latin America” after 500 years of subjugation by the Spanish and the U.S. [5] No small feat, indeed! But again, these monumental events, which began with poor Venezuelans rising up against an increase in fuel prices, apparently deserve no mention, at least as judged by the Western media.

Why this difference in coverage by the U.S. press? Again, if one were to look at the magnitude of these two events, Venezuela’s Caracazo would deserve as much, if not more, coverage than the killings in Beijing. However, the killings during the Caracazo were, in the word of Chomsky again, of “unworthy victims,” because these killings were carried out by a government – that of President Carlos Andres Perez – that was aligned with the United States. And, the David that would bring down this Goliath was Hugo Chavez, a perceived enemy of the U.S.

Moreover, the Caracazo is a problem for U.S. journalists because the number of its victims dwarfs the number of individuals (a total of 42) killed during the most recently months of protests in Venezuela. And, this 42 includes a sizable number of state security forces and pro-government activists who were killed by violent opposition protestors. [6] In other words, the reaction of Venezuela’s government, now led by Chavez successor Nicolas Maduro, appears, and in fact has been, much more restrained than that of the pro-U.S. government which preceded Hugo Chavez. But again, you would not know this from U.S. media coverage of these events.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/09/a-tale-of-two-massacres/

Jailed Colombia army colonel names ex-commander general as ‘creator of false positives’

Jailed Colombia army colonel names ex-commander general as ‘creator of false positives’
Jun 9, 2014 posted by Tim Hinchliffe

A former colonel imprisoned for war crimes has accused the former commander general of Colombia’s National Army of orchestrating the murder of thousands of innocent civilians, local media reported

Jailed Colonel Robinson Gonzalez, convicted for his own role in the so-called “false positives” scandal, has named former General Mario Montoya as the architect of what he describes as an institutional rather than isolated practice, reported La FM radio Monday.

False positives is the term used to refer to murders carried out by paramilitary and military troops and later passed off as combat kills as part of the government offensive’s against Colombia’s rebel groups.

FACT SHEET: False Positives

Of the 1,000 combat kills claimed by the “Army of the North” during Montoya’s command, 200 were false positives, according to Gonzalez, who claimed that Montoya became the “creator of false positives” after being pressured to beef up his kill statistics.

More:
http://colombiareports.co/jailed-army-colonel-offers-testimony-colombia-govt-murdered-200-civilians/

Paul Watson: Help Me Help the Oceans

June 03, 2014
Let's Make An Appeal to the President of Costa Rica

Help Me Help the Oceans

by PAUL WATSON


Now that there is a new administration it may be worthwhile to appeal directly to the New President of Costa Rica.

I was placed on the Interpol Red List by the very corrupt former Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla whose administration saw the shark finners make huge profits with few arrests. Her administration also did nothing to prevent the death of Jairo Mora Sandoval who requested government protection months before he was murdered.

I am hopeful that President D. Luis Guillermo Solis will address both corruption and the illegal slaughter of turtles and sharks in Costa Rican waters.

Costa Rica continues to demand my extradition for an incident in 2002 when I stopped Costa Rican fishing boat illegally finning sharks in Guatemalan waters. I intervened with permission of the Guatemalan government. Despite the entire incident documented on film for the documentary Sharkwater which demonstrated that no fishermen were injured, I was charged with attempted murder on the word of the eight fishermen. I appeared in court in 2002 and the charges were dropped. Two weeks later I was instead charged with 8 counts of assault. I appeared in court yet again and the charges were dismissed. A decade later I was charged a third time for the reckless operation of a ship and Costa Rica issued a demand for my extradition.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/03/lets-make-an-appeal-to-the-president-of-costa-rica/

Expats from Colombia to mobilize for peace

Expats from Colombia to mobilize for peace
Jun 6, 2014 posted by Larisa Sioneriu

A group of Colombian expats decided to mobilize in order to promote support for the peace process between the government and the country’s largest insurgency, the FARC.

Colombians living abroad are mobilizing for June 10 in different cities of the world in an attempt to create awareness and express their support for Colombia’s ongoing peace process in Havana.

‘Mobilizacion por la paz en Colombia’ (Mobilisation for peace in Colombia) is the slogan under which the Colombian expats will take over the streets of international cities in order to call for unilateral ceasefire, national dialog and democracy.

“The last three generations of Colombians have not lived a single day in peace. We have been engaged in an unbearable war has left misery and despair. The cost of the last 50 years of conflict has been high: A fragmented and distrustful society, millions of victims, billions of dollars of our national wealth devoted to the military budget at the expense of improvements in the quality of life of Colombian families . A spiral of violence where victims are all one way or another,” the group wrote on the Facebook page.

More:
http://colombiareports.co/expats-colombia-mobilise-peace/

OAS passes unanimous resolution supporting Colombia peace process

OAS passes unanimous resolution supporting Colombia peace process
Jun 6, 2014 posted by Larisa Sioneriu

The Organization for American States (OAS) officially expressed its unanimous support Thursday for ongoing peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC rebel group, the country’s largest.

The world’s oldest regional organization released a statement, signed by all 35 independent member states, praising the progress made since the start of negotiations in Havana, Cuba in November 2012. The peace process was initiated by the government of President Juan Mnauel Santos, currently running for reelection in a second round run-off contest scheduled for June 15.

“(The OAS) expresses its strong support for the efforts advanced by the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos and the Colombian people, accompanied by the international community, to reach a final agreement to end the armed conflict that has affected Colombia for decades,” read the statement.

The statement emerged from the 44th General OAS Assembly, held in the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion, which concluded that “peace is a fundamental value for the Continent” and that “negotiating peace in this country represents a historical opportunity for Colombia and the whole Continent.”

Representatives from Ecuador and Venezuela both made similar statements, mentioning specifically the efforts of the Santos government to restore friendly diplomatic relations between the neighboring Andean nations, following years of tense conflict.

More:
http://colombiareports.co/oas/#prettyPhoto

The Major Weapons of Neo-Liberalism

Weekend Edition June 6-8, 2014
Materialism and Misery

The Major Weapons of Neo-Liberalism

by GRAHAM PEEBLES


We live under the omnipresent shadow of a political/economic system, which promotes materiality, selfishness and individual success over group wellbeing. It is a model of civilisation that is making us miserable and ill. Dependent on continuous consumption, everything and everyone is seen as a commodity, and competition and ambition are extolled as virtues. Together with reward and punishment this trinity of division has infiltrated and polluted all areas of contemporary life, including health care and education.

It is a system that denies compassion and social unity. Unhappiness and mental illness, as well as extreme levels of inequality (income and wealth) flow from the unjust root, causing social tensions, eroding trust and community. Over half the world’s population (3.5 billion people) live in suffocating poverty on under $2 a day (the World Bank’s official poverty line), whilst the wealthiest 10% owns 85% of global household wealth. This level of inequality is growing, is unjust and shameful, and has far reaching consequences. Materialistically obsessed societies such as America (where income and wealth inequality is the highest of any industrialised nation), have higher levels of drug and alcohol dependency, mental illness, crime and incarceration, as well as child pregnancies and homicides, than more equal nations. People in unequal societies are suspicious of ‘the other’ – that’s anyone who looks thinks, and/or acts differently – and generally speaking don’t trust one another. A mere 15% of people in America confessed to trusting their fellow citizens, compared to 60% in less unequal parts of the world. The resulting divisions aggravate social tensions, fuelling criminality and a cycle of mistrust and paranoia is set in motion.

Focus on the material, on self-fulfillment and success places us in competition with one another and strengthens feelings of distrust, alienation and division. All of which run contrary to and move us away from our underlying nature, resulting in the inculcation of fear and insecurity. Mental illness, including anxiety and depression – a worldwide epidemic claiming 5% of the global population – are further consequences of this dysfunctional social model. Millions are hooked on pharmaceuticals (legal and illegal), much to the delight of the multi-national drug companies whose yearly profits in America alone nestle comfortably in the trillions of US $. Suicide, according to a major report by the World Health Organisation (WHO), is the third highest cause of death amongst adolescents (road accidents and HIV are one and two), and the primary cause is depression.

Desire Division Discontent

Over 2,500 years ago, the Buddha taught that desire and attachment to the object(s) of desire is the root of all suffering. His message of moderation and balance is more relevant today than perhaps at any other time.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/06/the-major-weapons-of-neo-liberalism/

Arctic Sea Ice in Steep Decline

Weekend Edition June 6-8, 2014
The Great Melt

Arctic Sea Ice in Steep Decline

by ROBERT HUNZIKER


For years now prominent scientists have warned of the dangers of global warming and a concomitant tipping point for the Arctic. Because of abnormal heat, things are not looking good. Arctic sea ice is in a vertical free-fall. But, the melt season only just started!

This makes Obama’s call for regulation of coal-burning power plants look like a fanciful ephemeral wish list, too little, too late.

Do not expect to see this story on the nightly news. This news story comes by way of the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) obtained whilst comparing images of sea ice concentration on May 14, 2014 to June 2, 2014.

Confirmation of the NRL images comes from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC – Boulder) reporting that ice concentration values plummeted by more than 286,000 square kilometers, an area the size of the state of Nevada (286,351 sq km), which alarmingly disappeared over a period of a day, not weeks or months, leaving glaciologists flat-footed and startled.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/06/arctic-sea-ice-in-steep-decline/

Company Linked to Death Squads Addresses World Bank Panel

Company Linked to Death Squads Addresses World Bank Panel
29 May 2014
by Douglas Gillison

The World Bank hosted a Honduran agribusiness company to speak at a bank conference in Washington on security and human rights matters last week, months after the bank’s own audit findings linked the company to scores of killings and a violent land conflict.

The company, Corporación Dinant, appeared at an annual conference on sustainable business practices, despite intense controversy over the bank’s support for the company, which human rights groups have tied to death squads.

The appearance came as Dinant announced it had built barracks to house Honduran military forces on one of its plantations, while disarming its own private company guards. Last year, one human rights organization cited witnesses who said that state security forces and company guards had acted interchangeably.

Roger Pineda, the spokesman for Dinant, did not respond to requests for comment. But the company has long denied targeting its opponents for violence.

More:
http://100r.org/2014/05/company-linked-to-death-squads-addresses-world-bank-panel/