Global News and Analysis Archives - Page 206 of 294

Argentine Dictatorship’s Economic Crimes Coming to Light

Marcela Valente March 15, 2012 Marcela Valente

(IPS) – While the trials against members of the military and police for human rights abuses committed during Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship move ahead, the regime’s economic crimes have also begun to come to light.

More than 600 businesspersons lost their property to the dictatorship.

“We weren’t involved in politics and had nothing to do with the government. But they took everything we had, our seven companies and the company plane. And it’s a miracle they didn’t kill us,” Alejandro Iaccarino, who was a prosperous dairy industry businessman in the 1970s, told IPS. read more

A People’s History of Robin Hood

Paul Buhle March 15, 2012 Paul Buhle

Source: Yes Magazine

For hundreds of years, he’s fought tax injustice, tyranny, and the seizure of the commons. Why we still need him today.

In the late 1950s, a handful of peaceniks protested mandatory ROTC on a major U.S. university campus by carrying signs and wearing green buttons. Back when The Adventures of Robin Hood was a giant hit on television, most everybody knew that green was Robin Hood’s color and that Robin could not side with the king’s soldiers or future soldiers of any empire. Five decades later, the lead protagonist of a cult favorite American cable show, Leverage, announces at the beginning of each episode: “The rich and the powerful take what they want; we steal it back for you.” read more

Honduras: A Chronicle of Hell, Women and Hope

Jessica Isla March 13, 2012 Jessica Isla

Source: Americas Program

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Inferno, Canto III, line 9
The Divine Comedy

We all have different ideas of Hell. But most us raised and brought up in the Judeo-Christian Western culture share a religious image of a lake of fire that sears hundreds, thousands or millions of people, condemned for unmentionable sins.

That’s the myth. Then there’s the reality.

The reality arrived this February 14th, the day we celebrate love and friendship. On this day Hell became reality when the penitentiary of the city of Comayagua —absurdly called the “penal farm”, as if sentences, prisoners or prisons were cultivated there— caught on fire. read more

Obama Breaks New Ground When It Comes to War With Iran

Tom Engelhardt March 12, 2012 Tom Engelhardt

Source: Tom Dispatch

When I was young, the Philadelphia Bulletin ran cartoon ads that usually featured a man in trouble — dangling by his fingers, say, from an outdoor clock. There would always be people all around him, but far too engrossed in the daily paper to notice. The tagline was: “In Philadelphia, nearly everybody reads the Bulletin.”

Those ads came to mind recently when President Obama commented forcefully on war, American-style, in ways that were remarkably radical. Although he was trying to ward off a threatened Israeli preemptive air strike against Iran, his comments should have shocked Americans — but just about nobody noticed. read more

The Slide Toward War

Conn Hallinan March 9, 2012 Conn Hallinan

Source: Foreign Policy in Focus

Wars are fought because some people decide it is in their interests to fight them. World War I was not started over the Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination, nor was it triggered by the alliance system. An “incident” may set the stage for war, but no one keeps shooting unless they think it’s a good idea. The Great War started because the countries involved decided they would profit by it, delusional as that conclusion was.

It is useful to keep this idea in mind when trying to figure out whether the United States or Israel will go to war with Iran. In short, what are the interests of the protagonists, and are they important enough for those nations to take the fateful step into the chaos of battle? read more

What Greece Can Learn from Argentina

César Chelala March 5, 2012 César Chelala

Source: Common Dreams

To understand Greece’s recent travails and how the country got there it is useful to quote what Mikis Theodorakis, the famous Greek songwriter and composer wrote about it. Recently, on his home page, Theodorakis said:

“Until 2009, there was no serious economic problem. The major wounds of our economy were the enormous expenses related to the purchase of war material and the corruption of a part of the political and economic-journalistic sector. For both of these wounds, foreigners are jointly responsible. Germans, for instance, as well as French, English and Americans, earned billions of Euros from annual sales of war material, to the detriment of our national wealth. That continuous hemorrhage brought us to our knees and did not permit us to move forward, while at the same time it made foreign nations prosperous. The same was true of the problem of corruption. The German company Siemens, for instance, maintained a special department for buying off Greek stakeholders in order to place its products in the Greek market. Hence, the Greek people have been victims of that predatory duo of Greeks and Germans, growing richer at their expense.” read more