Filed under: South America
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20 December 2009
Source: Global Research
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez revealed today on his Sunday television and radio program, Aló Presidente, that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, have illegally entered Venezuela’s airspace during the past several days. “A few days ago, one of these military planes penetrated Venezuela as far as Fort Mara,” a Venezuelan military fort in the State of Zulia, bordering Colombia. The drone was seen by several Venezuelan soldiers who immediately reported the aerial violation to their superiors. President Chávez gave the order today to shoot down any drones detected in Venezuelan territory. Chávez also directly implicated Washington in this latest threat against regional stability by confirming that the drones were of US origen.
On Thursday, President Chávez denounced Continue reading
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14 August 2009
Source: Centre for Research on Globalization
-After the U.S. military withdrawal from Panama in 1999, the Pentagon has been expanding the “cooperative security locations” in the region. The U.S. Southern Command also operates some 17 radar sites, mostly in Peru and Colombia. All of the above is in addition to existing U.S. bases in Latin America, including a missile tracking station on Ascension Island in the Caribbean, and Soto Cano in Palmerola, Honduras. Furthermore, the United States has Continue reading
Supporters of Honduras' ousted President Manuel Zelaya protest outside the National Congress in Tegucigalpa, Wednesday, July 15, 2009.
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10 August 2009
Source: Socialist Voice
The people of Honduras have now suffered more than 40 days of military rule. The generals’ June 28 coup, crudely packaged in constitutional guise, ousted the country’s elected government and unleashed severe, targeted, and relentless repression.
The grassroots protests have matched the regime in endurance and outmatched it in political support within the country and internationally. Its scope and duration is unprecedented in Honduras history. Popular resistance is the main factor affecting the international forces attempting to shape the outcome of the governmental crisis. It weighs heavy on the minds of the coup’s authors and their international backers.
As Eva Golinger has convincingly documented1, the United States took part in conceiving, planning, and staging the coup. The U.S. ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Hugo Llorens, coordinates a team of high-ranking U.S. and Honduran military officials, and creatures from the old Bush administration, using the Soto Cano (Palmerola) U.S. air force base.
But when the army, machine guns blazing, assaulted President Zelaya’s house, kidnapped him, and dumped him in Costa Rica – still in pajamas – their actions forged unprecedented unity in Latin America and the Caribbean against the coup regime, and enraged hundreds of thousands within the country.
Latin American unity
In the first days after the coup, it appeared that the whole world denounced the Honduran generals and their civilian front men. ALBA – the nine-nation Bolivarian alliance initiated by Venezuela and Cuba – took the initiative in uniting Latin American governments around a common stand. Nicaragua’s capital, Managua, became the temporary capital of Our America. Many Latin American presidents knew only too-well that they could soon suffer Zelaya’s fate.
Argentina’s Cristina Fermandez devoted her Continue reading
Filed under: South America
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6 August 2009
Source: Venzuelanalysis
On Wednesday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez presented evidence that Colombia’s accusations that his government provided grenade launchers to the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Colombian guerrilla organization, are false.
In a press conference dedicated largely to the issue, Chavez said the three grenade launchers that Colombian soldiers said they found in possession of the FARC recently might be those that were stolen when the guerrillas raided a Venezuelan military post on the Colombian border in 1995.
Chavez, a former military officer trained in the use of grenade launchers, handed reporters a series of official documents and photos that Colombia sent to Venezuela in June. He pointed out a discrepancy between the documents, which said the weapons still contained grenades when they were found, and the photos of the weapons, which showed they had been fired and were no longer loaded with grenades.
Last week, Colombia said it had confirmed that the weapons seized from the FARC had been sold to the Continue reading
Filed under: South America
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1 August 2009
Source: Green Left Weekly
The frosty relations between Colombia and Ecuador got even frostier on July 6 when Colombian officials and lawyers accused members of Ecuador’s government of working for left-wing Colombian guerrillas.
The accusations arose after a video was released featuring Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) commander Jorge Briceno (who goes by the alias “Mono Jojoy”) claiming the guerrillas gave financial support to the 2006 election campaign of Ecuador’s left-wing President Rafael Correa.
Colombia’s prosecutor-general, Mario Iguaran, claimed that a former security minister in Correa’s government, Gustavo Larrea, and former Correa adviser Jose Chauvin were “emissaries” for the FARC.
Ecuadorian officials said the video is doctored. Correa called the footage a “sham” and demanded the FARC clarify whether they had funded his campaign in any way.
Correa has appointed a commission to investigate the claims and the origin of the video, which he claimed was part of a right-wing campaign “to Continue reading
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1 August 2009
Source: Green Left Weekly
With the June 28 military coup in Honduras, the agreement for five United States military bases in Colombia and the intensification of a dirty propaganda campaign against Venezuela, “the big question is whether the US will look at launching a war that will undoubtedly spread throughout the region, or whether it will decide to postpone such a scenario and attempt to continue dealing regular blows.
“There is no other possible scenario.”
This is how Luis Bilbao, the director of the Venezuelan-based Latin American-wide magazine America XXI, described the situation in the region to Green Left Weekly.
ALBA
Bilbao has accompanied Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to various regional gatherings and has worked with the Chavez government to help build the Union of South American Nations (Unasur). He said recent US moves, which included assisting the Honduran coup, were the result of the Continue reading
The government of Peru attacked unarmed Indigenous protesters in Bagua Chica, in the northern Amazon region. The attack, which included snipers and helicopters, began early last Friday and continued late into Saturday (6 June 2009). More on this below.
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8 June 2009
Source: Rabble
The rhetoric was sharp enough to cut down Amazonian hardwoods. Yesterday, Sunday June 7th, after a number of ministers had been paraded out Saturday and the day before, Peru’s el Señor Presidente, Alan Garcia decided to make it personal. After a joint police-military operation aimed at stopping an Indigenous protest had gone awry, leaving many dead on both sides, Garcia declared the Indigenous elements to be standing in the way of progress, in the path of national development, wrenches in the gears of modernity, and part of an international conspiracy to keep Peru down. In a troubling statement on the resemblance of the Indigenous protestors to the infamous Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) armed insurrection, Garcia seemed to imply the Natives were a band of terrorists as he stood in front of hundreds of military officers in a nationally televised speech. He continued to decry the Indian barbarity and savagery, and called for all police and military to Continue reading
Filed under: South America
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For more information, visit http://peruanista.blogspot.com/
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( Dated Piece | 26 April 2009 )
Source: The Dominion
MONTREAL–One of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s first major foreign visits after being elected in 2006 to his first minority government was to Latin America and the Caribbean. The trip aimed to promote a Canadian foreign policy focused on establishing “new partnerships in the Americas.”
Canada has aggressively pushed to establish trade agreements in the Americas, and in pursuit of this signed bilateral trade deals with Peru and Colombia in 2009. Concurrent with the push towards more trade pacts in the Americas, Canada has cut the number of nations receiving bilateral aid through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
Today’s Canadian foreign aid policy sees a smaller number of countries being targeted for aid through the Conservatives’ “countries of concentration” policy, which limits aid to 20 nations. The policy focus centres on trade with Continue reading
RACISM & NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS | NEWS/COMMENTARY 