Spy hysteria redux
By Amaury Cruz
Once more, the corporate media is giving voice to anti-Cuban-spy hysteria, as pro-embargo forces take to their battle stations and try to shoot down the plane of normal U.S.-Cuba relations before it takes off and escapes for good. In the absence of something more substantive, why not resurrect old fears about spies in our midst to sabotage any attempts at rapprochement?
For example, according to a Miami Herald article published June 14th and e-mailed by the University of Miami’s Cuba Transition Project, the “U.S. now has zero tolerance for Cuban spies.” Thus titled, the article artfully raises not only the specter of spies running amok, but also a supposed new “tough” attitude by the U.S. government. It’s not clear, however, how the U.S. was ever tolerant of Cuban spies and the article actually explains that U.S. counterintelligence has preferred to watch Cuba’s spies and expel them only when they got “too frisky.”
‘If you’re not sick, we’re not doing our job’
A message from the AMA
New car habit can cure hard times
By Saul Landau
You know bad times have hit when Illinois budget cuts no longer permit the state to bury dead indigents. A letter to funeral homes from the Department of Human Services blamed “the General Assembly’s failure to approve the revenue plan proposed by Gov. Quinn.” Illinois paid about $15 million yearly to bury some 10,000 impoverished people.
Honduras: Repression and urgent international action
An editorial in La Jornada (Mexico) June 30, 2009
On the first day of the attempted coup that interrupted the rule of democracy in Honduras, unequivocal and emphatic international rejection arose...
Latin America: Revolution and counter-revolution
By Jorge Gómez Barata
Social revolutions respond to historical needs and their nature is determined by the tasks they perform, the forces that compel them, and the regimes they help install. The leaders and the avant-gardes that lead them influence the profile of each particular process and of the movement as a whole.
Iran’s brutal overreaction
By Max J. Castro
Regardless of who really won the Iranian election, the brutal reaction of the theocratic regime to peaceful protests has destroyed any legitimacy the government and its leadership might have hoped to maintain. The disproportionate, bloody actions gave the image of a state at war against a large swath of its own people. The hard-liners may have won the election or they may have stolen it or lost it. What is clear is that they lost their head and the global public relations battle.
You provide the Tweets, we'll provide the info war
By Jack Z. Bratich
From the CounterPunch
We can all remember a moment when we gazed up at the sky and used our imagination to make familiar shapes out of the clouds. In folk wisdom, seers practice aeromancy, a form of divination that involves observing atmospheric phenomena and nephomancy, the divination by studying clouds.
OAS: Reinstate President Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales
Instructs the Secretary General to undertake, together with representatives of various countries, diplomatic initiatives aimed at restoring democracy and the rule of law and the reinstatement of President Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales, pursuant to Article 20 of the Inter-American Democratic Charter and report to the Special General Assembly on the results of the initiatives. Should these prove unsuccessful within 72 hours, the Special General Assembly shall forthwith invoke Article 21 of the Inter-American Democratic Charter to suspend Honduras’ membership.
Click here to read the resolution
Not enough audacity
By Paul Krugman
From The New York Times (June 25, 2009)
When it comes to domestic policy, there are two Barack Obamas.
On one side there’s Barack the Policy Wonk, whose command of the issues -- and ability to explain those issues in plain English -- is a joy to behold.
But on the other side there’s Barack the Post-Partisan, who searches for common ground where none exists, and whose negotiations with himself lead to policies that are far too weak.
Both Baracks were on display in the president’s press conference earlier this week. First, Mr. Obama offered a crystal-clear explanation of the case for health care reform, and especially of the case for a public option competing with private insurers.
Al's Loupe
Miami’s game of wheel of the fortunate
By Alvaro F. Fernandez
Miami is a great place to do business -- if you’re a politician or were one.
Monday morning I woke up to the news that Barbara Carey-Shuler, a former Miami-Dade county commissioner, had received cash payoffs from a prominent developer during the 1990s (while still a commissioner) in exchange for her support on deals having to do with the county. Here’s the kicker: It is now too late to levy any possible criminal charges against Carey-Shuler because the statute of limitation has run out.
What I find most interesting, though, is that anyone (and this includes the state attorney’s office and The Miami Herald) who has been around Miami politics long enough, and I have, knows that Ms. Carey-Shuler had her hands in the cookie jar long before the wrongdoing was reported by The Miami Herald this past week. For my Miami readers who might not remember, this is the same Carey-Shuler who was paid as an executive by the Miami-Dade County School Board, while she served as commissioner (not a crime), for a mysterious job no one was ever able to pinpoint. In other words, the commissioner used to get paid (close to six figures, if I remember correctly) for a job that did not exist and that she never showed up for.
Please cry for me, Argentina!
By Bill Press
Oh, the Appalachian Trail. It's famous as the longest footpath in the nation -- but now we know it's even longer than we thought, stretching all the way from Maine to Argentina! And nobody ever encountered as many bumps along the trail as South Carolina's Republican Governor Mark Sanford.
